If the collective noun for a bunch of morons is a "drool," then what would it be for a group of feckless twenty-something cretins? A "slobber"? A "salivation"? The group of six men in this rollicking satire run the entire gamut of idiocy as they battle the formidable Midori Oba-sans (aunties), those of sharp elbows, sharper tongues, dyed hair and withering looks.

POPULAR HITS OF THE SHOWA ERA, by Ryu Murakami. Translated by Ralph McCarthy. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011, 192 pp., $13.95 (paper)

The group of six men come together by accident rather than choice; they are bored, they are single, and they gather together to trade inanities, sing cheesy karaoke songs and drink One Cup sake — they get excited over macaroni salad, electronic equipment and watching the silhouetted figure of a woman undressing in the apartment opposite. They are a pathetic tribe, a gang of postteen otaku (geek) without the will or sense to be obsessed with anything.

The Midori Society — a collection of women whose surnames happen to be Midori — are of a certain age, divorcees who congregate to share stories, gossip and take holidays together. It's Ishihara, Nobue, Yano, Sugiyama, Kato and Sugioka against Henmi, Yanagimoto, Tomiyama, Suzuki, Iwata and Takeuchi; and the violence escalates from random to ultra as the two groups exact revenge on each other.