'I've always been shy," says Kazuo. "Face-to-face communication never came easily to me." At 48, he's been out of work five years. He lives with his mother, who's close to 80 — mostly off her pension. A typical day — typical not only of him, says the weekly Spa!, but of an increasing number of middle-aged men like him — goes something like this: Up at 10 a.m., Net-surfing till noon; more Net-surfing plus DVD-watching after brunch until dinner at 8 p.m., then back to Net-surfing till bedtime at 3 a.m.

This is the sort of thing Spa! invites us to contemplate — men aging alone in tiny rooms staring hour after glassy-eyed hour at tiny screens, with little hope that tomorrow, or next week, or next year will bring anything better.

Kazuo graduated from university and got a job in finance, spending years at a company without, owing to his painful reticence, speaking a word to anyone beyond the bare requirements of office routine. Starved for companionship, he'd pass whole nights chatting online, showing up zombified at work the next morning. One day he nodded off while his boss was reading him a lecture on his poor performance. His professional life ended there.