Last weekend, Nihon TV broadcast a two-hour program based on Junko Sakai's bestselling book "Makeinu no Toboe (The Howl of the Loser Dog)," a piece of nonfiction. The show, however, was a standard trendy drama, meaning long on ritzy real-estate and product placements, short on situations that resemble real life.

Thanks to Sakai, "makeinu" has become an everyday word that the media uses to describe a female thirtysomething who's not married but wishes she were. In the book, however, the definition is narrower: women approaching 40 with insecure jobs and no marriage prospects in sight.

The drama took a predictably neutral view. The three makeinu represented three distinct types: One was a very successful businesswoman who longed for marriage and children but who found fulfillment in her professional responsibilities; another was a divorced, childless woman who didn't see any point in going through marriage again; and the third was a ditzy fashion fatality who wanted to marry but only if the man had lots of money and she didn't have to give up her frivolous lifestyle.