Yoshitani’s comic-book series is called “Otaryman.” The title joins “salaryman,” the internationally known word for a loyal, hardworking company employee, with “otaku,” a word often used to describe a socially inept young man obsessed with comics, computers or anime.

An otaryman, then, is an oxymoron of the office. His head and his heart are usually elsewhere. He is surrounded by fellow office workers but can’t figure out what to say to them. He stays late at work not because he really wants to, but because everyone else does.

Yoshitani concedes he is that otaryman.

“We systems engineers often say to each other that even people held in slavery can go home and have dinner with their families,” he said. “We cannot.”

Despite a healthy income from his manga, Yoshitani has not quit his office job. Most of his comics are created when he arrives home late a night from long days at the office.

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