OKYO — Every Tuesday evening, millions of Japanese are moved, often to tears, by the series "Project X: Challengers," which documents successful projects undertaken by Every Salaryman.

An improbable television hit and cultural phenomenon, the show explains in sometimes numbing detail such things as how Japanese engineers after World War II succeeded in pumping crude out of a particularly difficult oil field, building a bridge in western Japan, inventing the electric rice-cooker or coming up with the VHS standard. The heroes tend to be salarymen, aging and unsung, who make for stiff studio guests.

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The program has spun off books, comics and DVD's, allowing viewers to savor especially memorable episodes, say, on plasma television or the rotary engine.

Each technological innovation — invariably the fruit of forbearance and selflessness, single-minded devotion to work and company — recalls an age when values went unquestioned. In a country groping its way out of a long economic malaise, the program illuminates a recent past when all seemed possible, inspiring feelings of validation and nostalgia among older Japanese, envy and desire among some younger ones.

"Before, it seemed people had more freedom," said Katsuya Kondo, a 36-year-old computer engineer. "We have become very conservative and so everything has become very average. Now we're living in an era without dreams. I'm envious of the people in `Project X.' "

On a Friday night this summer, with a small group of colleagues and friends, Mr. Kondo had obtained a room inside the Karaoke No Tetsujin in the Ginza district of Tokyo, a huge building filled with small rooms rented by the hour. Having just arrived, Mr. Kondo had his blue jacket on and his yellow tie unloosened.

In the same room, Tomiko Sakamoto, 47, picked out some of her favorite "Project X" episodes, like the one on how engineers completed a hydroelectric dam in Osaka or developed the automated ticket gates used at train stations across the country.

"These people succeeded after repeated setbacks," Ms. Sakamoto said. "That made me wonder if Japanese nowadays have the strength to overcome such difficulties.

"Sometimes I cry when I watch that program."

Indeed, the program pushes all the right emotional buttons. A typical 45-minute episode might start with a look back at the suffering endured during World War II. Against big odds — say, American occupying forces who sneered at Japanese efforts to look for oil in the Middle East, or American supermarkets that waved away a soya sauce company's product as "bug juice" — the salarymen gain a toehold.

After the inevitable disaster or setback, the project succeeds, after which a mixture of historical film and dramatic re-creation gives way to brief studio interviews with the protagonists, or, if they are dead, with their colleagues or relatives. The camera shows the aging salarymen walking slowly into the studio and bowing. As the camera zooms in on a wrinkly face, capturing the slightest hint of a watery eye at a critical moment, many viewers like Ms. Sakamoto just lose it.

Akira Imai, 47, the creator and producer of the program, said he came up with the idea three years ago, a decade after the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy.

"Japanese were hurt and had lost vitality," said Mr. Imai, in an interview at the headquarters of NHK, Japan's public television network. "I thought that the middle-aged and older people who built up Japan after the war, when they looked back on their own lives, must have felt that their lives had been negated."

"So I thought we would be forgiven if there's one program in which these ordinary people are the protagonists," he added.

After a slow start, "Project X" has continued to grow in popularity, once scoring a 20 percent share of the audience. It also has turned many middle-aged men, who rarely watch television, into fanatics.

"It's the best program!" said Mitsuyoshi Saito, 55, an air-conditioning company employee, in another room at the Karaoke No Tetsujin. "Salarymen are all tired nowadays. So this program makes you recall the good old days."

Mr. Saito said he had taped every episode of "Project X." With seven friends, he sat around tables covered with empty glasses; some sang the lyrics of a love song that flickered on the TV screen. "My dream," Mr. Saito said, "is to become the kind of man worthy enough to appear on `Project X.' "

In another room, four young workers at an auto-parts company said "Project X" was de rigueur in their office. Tomonori Suzuki, 27, said he had caught several episodes and even bought a DVD of one he had found particularly moving, on the development of the rotary engine.

"Times have changed and it's now very difficult for one person to make a big effort," Mr. Suzuki said. "But those people who pursued what they loved — that strikes a chord in me."

Generational differences in attitudes are perhaps nowhere starker than in Japan, which has lived through reconstruction, miraculous growth and lowered expectations within a couple of generations. So it was not surprising that in the Shibuya district, Tokyo's youth capital, few had ever heard of "Project X."

One who had watched some episodes, Yota Okada, 23, had spent the last few years traveling in Asia and the United States, and now held odd jobs. He said he could never work as single-mindedly as the generation of Japanese portrayed on "Project X."

"If there hadn't been people like that, the Japan of today wouldn't exist," he said. "There's no way that I'd be able to lead the carefree lifestyle that I do now."