Japanese films used to be full of swaggering samurai and blustering yakuza confident in their own manhood, however badly they treated the women in their lives. These types can still be found - see Takeshi Kitano's 2012 violent gang epic Outrage Beyond for example. But more and more films from this part of the world - and not only comedies either - feature youthful heroes who exist on the social and economic margins, minus girlfriends or prospects.
An avatar of this trend was the title character of Train Man, Shosuke Murakami's 2005 hit film based on the supposed true story of an otaku (rough translation: nerd) who rescued several women from a drunken harasser on a commuter train. In the romantic comedy, the awkward 23-year-old hero (Takayuki Yamada) falls for a woman he saves, but can only date her with the help of his online pals.
Train Man became a pop cultural phenomenon, generating a highly rated TV show and a bestselling manga and novel, while drawing attention to the multitudes of guys at home in online worlds, but at sea in reality, including the actualities of love and sex.
Though hardly the only reason for Japan's below-replacement birth rate, these woebegone males exemplify the larger plight of the country's millennial generation, who are struggling to achieve the conventional adulthood of a full-time job, marriage and family in a long stagnant and only slowly reviving economy.
Yoji Yamada, who created the prototype of the lovable loser at romance in the wandering peddler Tora-san, the hero of 48 films from 1969 to 1995, featured one such marginal millennial in Tokyo Family, his 2013 reworking of Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 classic, Tokyo Story. Still, though labouring as a freelance stagehand and driving an ancient car as he hits his fourth decade, Shuji (Satoshi Tsumabuki) at least has a girlfriend (Yu Aoi), an angelic 3/11 disaster volunteer.
More unsparing, and much funnier in a black comic way, is Nobuhiro Yamashita's The Drudgery Train (2012). Based on Kenta Nishimura's award-winning autobiographical novel, the drama focuses on a junior high school dropout with zero social skills (Mirai Moriyama) who works as a manual labourer. Though uncouth, clueless and broke, he has a fondness for mystery novels that leads to a friendship with a cute bookstore clerk (Atsuko Maeda). Of course, the hero can barely get past hello, but with discreet help from a less socially challenged friend, he successfully dates his literary soulmate.