Japan's weekly magazines do not consider their primary role to be reporting cheery news. It would be more correct to say their practice is to proceed from a pessimistic perspective and then, after readying readers to rude realities, encourage searches for sustenance and survival, if not salvation.

To celebrate the advent of the Reiwa Era from May 1, the government has extended the traditional Golden Week string of holidays and weekends, beginning this year from April 27, to 10 days. Masashi Omuro, an occupational health physician, warns in an interview with Weekly Playboy (April 22) that this celebratory act may not bode well for the nation's salaried workers.

Omuro predicts that the dreaded "May disease" (gogatsu-byō in Japanese) — the name for a malaise that often strikes weeks after the typically frantic month of April — is likely to be "the worst ever recorded."