In a cartoon that ran in the Asahi Shimbun in June, diners sit at a lunch counter, chopsticks in one hand, smartphone in the other, their attention as they eat focused more on their screens than on their meals. This annoys the sole customer in the place without a phone, who at last bursts out, "What bad manners people have nowadays!"
No, he is told, it's not a question of manners but of poverty. People can afford only the blandest and least appetizing fare. To make up for it, they call up gourmet meals to their screens and pretend that's what they're eating. Cyber-indulgence trumps real privation — mind over matter in modern dress.
Astonishing that, in the 21st century, in the midst of a technological revolution that is perhaps mankind's greatest stride forward since the agricultural revolution 12,000-odd years ago, in the world's third-largest economy with its educated and industrious workforce, we're still talking about poverty — not as a lingering but fading remnant of a formerly intractable problem, but as a condition that's spreading and deepening.