From this week, beneath the glitter of tinsel and glimmer of outdoor seasonal illumination, the bonenkai (year-end party) season begins in earnest.
Amidst these distractions, however, one comes away with the impression that the magazines are devoting more pages to health advisories for staying alive — or the financial implications of dying — with less space being devoted to schadenfreude over lapses among the luminaries, such as Nissan's ousted chairman, Carlos Ghosn.
The simplest explanation for this, of course, is that magazines know they must appeal to an aging readership, and feel moved to provide material to aid readers in their shukatsu, a term best rendered in English as "putting one's affairs in order."