It's hard to read Spa! magazine without feeling that something is dreadfully wrong with Japan. Week after week, it pursues themes that soon grow familiar: hopeless poverty, pointless toil, unrelieved loneliness. In just one issue this month (Sept. 6) it tackles, in separate articles, "hidden poverty," "near-death from overwork" and "elderly suicide terrorists more dangerous than the Islamic State group."

Spa! has been around a long time. Twenty years ago it addressed mostly male readers in their 20s. Now its core readership is in its 40s — older, wiser and soured, if not altogether ground down, by two decades of economic drift. Japan remains, for all its troubles, one of the world's most prosperous, most educated, most automated societies. But the good life, defined in terms of personal fulfillment, eludes it, now more than ever and with no happy turning point in sight. Such is Spa!'s overall message.

What is "hidden poverty"? Not poverty papered over with false gentility, but poverty in spite of comparative wealth: good salary, nice home, sleek car, kids going to good schools — what's poor about that? Well, it's killing you financially. You're saving nothing. And how will you pay off the home loan if your salary gets cut? It's happened to others. Are you immune, with your company struggling as it is? Maybe you should start economizing? How? Send the kids to cheaper schools and jeopardize their future? Seek less expensive nursing care for your aging and infirm parents, exposing them to who knows what risks of incompetence and abuse?