COLUMN ONE : Cheers for Our Hero, ‘Salaryman’ : Japanese use musicals, novels about the corporate rat race to inject new meaning--and a little soap opera flair--into humdrum work lives. Office politics and wives’ neglect are common themes.

As the curtain rises on Act I, dozens of dark-suited “salarymen” crammed into an imaginary train sway from side to side as they belt out: “Economic superpower Japan! We go for the gold! We push for section chief, we push for division manager.”

The number is from “Salaryman’s Gold Medal,” Japan’s latest hit musical, which offers an amusing and insightful look at the tense and often frustrating company-centered life of the Japanese office worker--the salaryman.

In America, such a play might be--or was, in the case of the 1961 hit musical, “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”--comedy, or parody, or even social criticism.

Not in Japan. Here, it’s business, an example of how contemporary Japanese entertainment, even as it caters to popular demand, also promotes the values of perseverance and hard work that have helped to make the country an economic giant. Art serves commerce and art is commerce.

Long work hours with low job satisfaction, little leisure and sterile home lives have long been a staple of the salaryman’s existence and much chronicled by those examining the roots of Japan’s economic might. But now that theirs is an affluent society, workers have sought to infuse their humdrum lives with new meaning. As its fans attest, plays like “Gold Medal” fill that void.

“I thought the life of a salaried worker was boring, but the play encouraged me to think it was worth living,” wrote one young clerk to the theater company that put on the musical.

“The play made me realize how hard my husband works at his office. I have to take better care of him,” a housewife wrote in another fan letter.

The theater is not the only place where Japanese can be edified and entertained at the same time. Novels, late-night television shows and movies are filled with dramas about the problems of the working man.

Many of the themes center on the lack of compassion among wives for their hard-working husbands. In one soap opera, a woman becomes distraught when her husband comes back from a two-year posting. His return threatens to disrupt the pattern of life the family has adopted in his absence. She is so upset that she tries to poison him with bad oysters. Eventually, she is persuaded to show more understanding.

Other shows focus on the conflicting virtues of duty and group loyalty. In what is an extension of the salaryman theme, one television series called “Hotelman” dramatizes the working lives of an elite corps of men and women serving in luxury hotels. In one episode, the first woman at the hotel to be promoted to bellhop gets in trouble for acting uppity. She oversteps her bounds by leaving her station to help a customer. She has to win back the group’s respect to be welcomed back into the fold.

In “Storeman,” a television series that chronicles the experiences of salesmen and women at Japan’s department stores, the hero falls in love with the daughter of a store manager. He is told he cannot date the woman until he becomes a full-fledged “storeman.” After several episodes, he wins grudging recognition when he persuades the entire staff to spend all night folding 1,000 paper cranes to provide emotional support for a young boy who had fallen sick in the store and was undergoing a critical operation.

Japanese workers find in such salaryman-inspired entertainment an opportunity to share and explore their often intense experiences in the corporate world.

Akihiro Tanii, a young employee at Matsushita Electric, is hooked on salaryman novels including the recent “The Public Relations Department Will Be Silent.” It recounts the way a PR department reacts when news leaks out about turmoil in the upper ranks of the company.

Tanii also follows a comic strip called “Section Chief Kosaku Shima,” about a hard-working advertising department chief who manages to make his way through his work life without playing office politics.

As in many such comic strips, the Shima character manages to find himself in bed with women, usually subordinates, with the frequency of James Bond. The strip, which is written by a former Matsushita employee, has been compiled into books that have sold 13 million copies. Last year, “Section Chief Kosaku Shima” was made into a feature film.

“The comics are often quite perceptive and interesting,” said Tanii. “It’s relaxing reading because you can easily imagine these kinds of power struggle situations occurring. You see it all the time.”

For Hajime Mita, 42, of Mitsubishi Trust, plays like “Gold Medal” work because they are extensions of real life.

“People in our age group don’t think of what to do after work. Work is the center of our life,” said Mita. “Maybe going to a play about salarymen won’t help you with your work, but it has greater impact on you because you feel empathy for those on the stage.”

In the entertainment field, no one comes closer to striking the right chord in this land of the organization man than the creator of “Gold Medal,” Katsuhiko Ishizuka.

Ishizuka is writer and director of the theater group Furusato Caravan, which performs the hit musical. Furusato Caravan-- furusato means “hometown”--has been panned by theater critics. But businessmen, Ishizuka’s most important audience, have applauded it by taking their fellow workers to it. About 100,000 people, mostly salarymen, have flocked to see “Gold Medal.”

Mitsuhiko Seki, 31, a salesman from Koyabayashi Seisaku, the drug company on which the musical was partially based, said he doesn’t follow other forms of salaryman entertainment but he finds Furusato Caravan uncannily accurate.

“The company feeling is exactly the way it is with us. You can really feel the story and cry because it is so real,” said Seki. “It is like stepping out and watching yourself from the outside.”

The plot of “Gold Medal” turns on whether its hero, Odakura, will finally be promoted to managing director of his company. Although members of his food products division work tirelessly and generate most of the company’s profits, the rival pharmaceuticals division gets most of senior management’s attention. A newly introduced energy drink gives Odakura the opportunity to shine. His whole division is rooting for him.

“Even the Salaryman has a dream,” his subordinates sing. “The dream is to climb the ladder. If the dream comes true he will become a managing director. . . . Promotions depend on obligation and connection. When our boss is promoted, he is sure to promote us.”

At home, Odakura’s wife spends the day on her word processor deciding what gifts should be sent to which managers and customers to help promote her husband’s career.

Audiences of dark-suited salarymen and their wives have been obviously touched by this glorification of the rat race and the dismal life that many of them lead.

Keichi Okumura, a 52-year-old executive at Asahi Glass who has arranged for a group of young people in his company to see the play as a form of training, sees salaryman entertainment, particularly plays like “Gold Medal,” as an opportunity for people to reflect on their lives.

“The world of the Japanese salaryman is a special world. By putting us on the stage, they give us an opportunity to think about how our attitudes toward the company are changing,” Okumura said.

The theater group can relate to the business world in part because it is operated like a business. It has a full-time staff of 80, of which 20 are salesmen who make cold calls at companies to drum up business. About 300 companies help the theater to sell tickets to their employees. Some corporations, like Okumura’s, have even been persuaded to use the play as a training device.

The play’s popularity is no surprise to Ishizuka. Ideas for his plays are market-oriented. He does market research, talking to as many as 100 people before writing his scripts. He typically gathers his 20 salesmen and takes off to a hot springs spa for three days of brainstorming. He said he wants ideas based on real-life experiences for his material. The food products-pharmaceutical rivalry in the company in “Gold Medal” was based on a battle between the sales and technology divisions of a gas company.

“When I do research for the plays, I get very depressed,” said Ishizuka. “But you can’t just express that or your customers won’t be satisfied.

“Looked at objectively, the salaryman doesn’t live a good life,” he added. “But I want to show that not everything is so bad. People who watch this (play) feel some meaning to their lives, to these experiences.”

Ishizuka compares himself to Charlie Chaplin; he said he offers a formula of bitterness laced with hope.

“No matter how tough life is, if you overcome it and can laugh about it, you feel better,” he said. “If you show bitter experiences and the salty side of work, it’s like sake and bourbon. It makes you feel better. If everything is just dark and gloomy, nobody wants to go.”

Ishizuka started Furusato Caravan with the idea of keeping alive the tradition of local theaters that once traveled from village to village in the days before television.

“The audiences included mothers, the elderly and intellectuals,” said Ishizuka. “Everybody could laugh and cry together--it was a source of community.”

Since he was playing to rural audiences, his plays focused on rural themes that everybody could relate to, such as the problems of small rice farmers.

“A contemporary play in a town of 10,000 might get an audience of 20; we would get 1,000,” Ishizuka said.

Then, two years ago, Ishizuka first applied the formula to a city audience with his play, “You Are My Sun Shain”-- shain means employee. In it, a loyal, hard-working salaryman is told to work in a town far from his wife and children. He thinks of quitting the company but decides to tough it out.

“Gold Medal” also ends on a bittersweet note. The hard-fighting group succeeds in making its product a hit only to find that their division leader does not win his promotion. There are dark recriminations, threats of betrayal and discussions of quitting. To avoid further conflict, the company chooses to break up the close-working team.

But in a typically Japanese twist, adversity is turned into opportunity. A senior managing director goes to the defeated division and humbles himself by sitting down and letting employees in the division pat his bald spot.

This act of humility helps members of the division overcome their frustration. Observing the self-sacrificing performance of his superior, the manager recognizes that he was indeed not yet ready for promotion.

In the finale, the employees all sing a song of new beginnings as they fight for the company in their new roles: “Our love we will find at the company. The company is the ship. The president is our captain. We all want to love our company.”

Times editorial assistant Chiaki Kitada contributed to this report.