Cooking on American TV is basically always nonfiction. Japan has this type of show too, so in both countries we can watch how-tos that teach us to cook elaborate dishes from scratch, whether we set foot in the kitchen ourselves or not. And for better or worse, there’s been cross-fertilization: the US now owns the TV cooking competition, a genre we borrowed from Japan after the successful importing of Iron Chef (a show that I loved, but that I think now has a lot to answer for).

But in Japan there are also many series where cooking and food are a central element of fiction. In these series, chefs are main characters, average people are obsessed with a certain dish, and even the plot may turn on a particular detail of a special recipe or ingredient.

Sure, in the US we have shows where the characters gather to eat in a certain restaurant or bar. There was one old show, Alice, about a waitress in a diner, and historical shows like Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey may have a shot of the staff working on dinner while they’re talking about something else. Maybe you can think of one or two more. Contrast this handful of shows with the fact that on a fansub site like gooddrama.net, there are enough shows with food that you can actually search for it as a separate genre, and that isn’t all of them.

Numbers aren’t the most important difference, though, because comparing those few shows to Japanese food drama is like comparing apples and oranges, or sushi and a Maine lobster roll. Take two tales that involve a soup-maker. You may have seen the Japanese movie Tampopo, where (in between other odd unrelated food-centric vignettes) the plot follows a woman who owns a ramen shop and is working to come up with the perfect recipe. We see her slaving over variations of broth and getting the advice of experts who make comments on her noodles like “They have sincerity, but lack substance.” Compare this to the most famous soup-maker on American TV – the character on Seinfeld who’s famous for yelling at people, not for obsessing about the details of his cooking.

The focus on culinary detail in Tampopo is far from unique. Japanese dramas reflect an obsession with the quality of food that that isn’t seen on American TV – reflecting the fact that it’s also not, I’m sad to say, part of American culture.

Becoming A Chef

Let’s start by looking at a particular sub-genre of the food genre in Japanese television shows. Yes, the story of “becoming a chef” seems to come up so often that I’m giving it its own category.

Western food: Hungry!

Start with a drama where the title fits this theme perfectly: Hungry! (Hanguri!). As a child, the main character, Yamate Eisuke, wanted to follow in the footsteps of his mother, a French chef with her own restaurant. Instead, he forms a rock band with three friends, but as the series opens, he’s nearly 30 and they haven’t broken through to the big time. He goes to his mother and tells her that he wants to return to her restaurant and study to be a chef again. Unfortunately this touching reunion is marred by the fact that his mother has a heart attack and drops dead.

Further complications ensue when he declares he’s going to take over the restaurant: his father has already sold it to a rival restauranteur, who in the course of the series becomes obsessed with Eisuke, going back and forth between wanting to ruin him and trying to hire him. (A relevant side note is that this bad guy is played by Goro Inagaki, a member of SMAP, which is a band that has its own line of food products at Japanese 7-11s, something else we’d never see in the US.)

Along with that business rivalry, which turns very personal, there are romantic complications, fights with his friends – but even the interpersonal drama usually turns on the food. One character’s family runs a small market garden nearby where the restaurant buys vegetables. She falls in love with Eisuke’s cooking first and then, as a sort of side effect, with him. And the rival tries to make trouble by convincing that family to sell all their produce to his restaurant instead. I definitely can’t think of an American series where the bad guy’s plan of attack consists of buying up all the tomatoes.

And much of the emotional drama is about Eisuke’s struggle to learn to be a French chef worthy of his mother’s legacy- a process we watch in extreme detail. Don’t watch this show when you are Hungry! yourself, because a huge amount of screen time is spent on shots of prepping, cooking, plating and serving French food. They’re so serious, they present the name of the dish on-screen when it is served. In fact, they’re so serious that there is a recipe book based on the series, and the star took French cooking lessons as part of his preparation for the drama.

Japanese food: Ando Natsu

Ando Natsu is a young woman with the dream of becoming a French baker. She starts as an apprentice at a cafe run by an older woman baker who she worships… who promptly drops dead. Watching these two dramas in succession, you get the feeling that making French food in Japan is not good for the lifespan.

With no idea what to do next, she stumbles into a wagashi shop in Asakusa. Wagashi are those exquisite traditional Japanese confections that are basically small edible works of art, made in different seasonal shapes including flowers. She sees that these sweets give the same joy to the customers as French pastry does, and asks to become an apprentice.

The title of this series and the character’s name actually refers to sweets – Ando Natsu is a pun on An-donut (a doughnut filled with sweet bean paste) which is pronounced the same in Japanese, and other characters often tease her by referring to this pun.

This series also spends a lot of time in the kitchen, referencing how hard it is to make the beautifully detailed sweets, how long the apprenticeship lasts, and the menial tasks the beginner is saddled with. Natsu washes a lot of dishes and gets very excited every time she’s allowed to do some simple part of the actual confection-making process for the first time.

Particular processes and ingredients in making wagashi are often central to the plots. In one episode, Natsu has to stay awake all night to supervise the fermenting of the starter for a special order for an important memorial service. She’s called away for a time to prevent someone from committing suicide. (Yes, really. The writers of this series did not fear improbable melodrama.) She thinks it still looks OK when she gets back, but in the morning, the master tells her it’s ruined. Fortunately, they’re expecting a delivery of koji, the starter for fermentation, and might have just enough time to make a new batch – till they find out the delivery truck was in an accident, and all the containers overturned and spilled.

Natsu thinks she’s solved the problem when she runs all over town and manages to buy a package of koji that comes from the same prefecture. Unfortunately, that’s not close enough. She’s crushed when they tell her they can’t use it, that without the exact same koji, they can’t claim to be selling the same sweets they’ve always made. The master explains in mystical detail that the skill of the chefs is nothing without the wind in the town, the atmosphere of the store, and the tiny living things in the koji.

You understand, this is like saying it’s not worth baking bread if you can’t get the same brand of yeast you’ve always used. For all I know this is true about wagashi, or even bread if you’re a true connoisseur, but that fact sure wouldn’t sustain that amount of drama in an American TV series.

Another element we see in Ando Natsu that frequently recurs in this type of drama is someone’s longing for a favorite food from long ago. One episode is about a woman who comes to buy their persimmon-shaped sweet which is the favorite of her dying father. For complicated and dramatic reasons they no longer make this sweet, but Natsu finds the recipe and tries to replicate it. This effort to satisfy a dying customer gets her fired (temporarily) for trying to pass off her inferior beginner’s work as the product of this revered generations-old shop. (Don’t worry, there’s a happy ending and the man does get his wagashi in the end.)

Cooking at Inns

Not all shows about professional cooks are set in restaurants. Some are about traditional inns, where the quality of the cuisine is a huge part of their reputation.

O-sen

O-sen, about an inn in Tokyo’s old shitamachi neighborhood, is practically an education in traditional Japanese cooking. (Like some others of these shows, O-sen is based on a manga – there are also many manga where fictional plots, settings and characters are food-related.) As we watch the training of a character who’s talked his way into a job in the kitchen without really understanding what this kind of cooking is all about, we learn about different kinds of miso, why a fire made of straw is best for cooking rice, and other details of extremely traditional Japanese cuisine.

O-sen is another show where a vital plot point turns on a particular ingredient. The cooks use a traditional hand-made katsuobushi, the dried bonito fish which is the fundamental ingredient in the broth used in nearly every Japanese dish, but is now mostly made in a more mass-produced way. The inn not only uses the hand-made variety, in fact they’ve always used the katsuobushi of one particular producer who is now threatened with being closed. Without this particular dried bonito, O-sen says, the taste will change, the food will no longer be their food, and the inn will have to go out of business.

There isn’t space here for me to explain all the intrigue that swirls around this – but all I can say is, I wish I lived in a country where dried fish can be so important to a plot.

Kamo, Kyoto e Iku

Along with the longing for a favorite food from the past, another recurring theme is people’s exquisitely accurate memory for such foods. Kamo, Kyoto e Iku is set in a traditional inn in Kyoto. One episode is about a couple who has been coming to the inn for 40 years. The woman, who’s had a stroke, loves a tofu dish they serve, so her husband brings her to the inn so she can have it again. While she no longer recognizes her own husband, she remembers the taste of the dish well enough to be disappointed that it doesn’t taste exactly the same. The inn’s owner goes to the 200-year-old tofu store to ask what’s happened. The tofu maker blows up at the suggestion that the tofu has changed, but eventually admits that the woman is right, that he’s gotten too old to make it properly. The happy ending comes when he teaches a younger tofu-maker his method, and the woman gets to have exactly the dish she remembers one more time.

Not Just Professionals

You’ll also find these elements in shows that aren’t set in inns or restaurants and where the main characters aren’t culinary professionals. My favorite example so far comes from Tokyo Bandwagon, which is about a family that runs an antique bookstore. In one episode the family is trying to reunite the cook from their local izakaya with a former momento. Long ago he wronged this man and can’t believe he will ever forgive him. They invite the cook for a meal and present him with a dish of simmered turnip. One taste and he basically says “OMG, it’s him!” and insists that no one else but his former master could have made that dish. He’s proved right when the man steps into the room for a dramatic reconciliation. It’s ridiculously improbable, but if you’re a fan of Japanese food, how can you not love it? (What’s more, how can you not weep with envy when they sit down to one of the family meals pictured above.)

I’ve also just started watching the first episode of a show called Lunch Queen. The main character is a waitress in a coffee shop who keeps a detailed notebook about places to go to eat lunch. A customer tries to convince her to pretend to be his fiancé as part of a ruse to approach his estranged family. She’s having none of it – till he tells her that they own the restaurant that makes the best omu-rice in all of Japan. I can’t wait to see what hijinks – and recipes – follow.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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This ”Power Rangers” jazz was a huge success with American kids straight away. And why not? It was capitalizing off of a show that had been perfecting the art of firing lasers at aliens since 1975. However, few people at that time, myself included, had any idea that there was anything foreign about the Power Rangers. As I grew up and left this childhood show behind, I eventually discovered the show from whence it came, Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger, and watching it was a total mind bender.

The monsters and costumes in ZyuRanger were cemented in my brain as mine, but the stories surrounding them were unfamiliar territory. Gone were the twenty-year-old teenagers of the American iteration, replaced with characters and plots that were actually…interesting! Or at the very least, weird.

But how do these two series compare? What was changed when the show was brought stateside? Remember, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers wasn’t your average localization. It was a re-filmed, re-edited Frankenstein project. So a lot was changed, not necessarily for the better.

The only way to properly explain is with a side by side compari-battle! Two shows. Five categories. One survivor. Which campy children’s TV show deserves your fanatical devotion?

Prepare yourself!

CATEGORY 1: SHOW SYNOPSIS

In the J-corner, a 170 million-year-old struggle between robotic dinosaur gods and the demonic hordes of a space witch.  In the A-corner, a 10,000-year-old struggle between a blue lava lamp and the demonic hordes of a space witch

Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger

170 million years ago, five god-like robot dinosaurs sealed an evil witch, Bandora, in a comet and froze five warriors in magic tombs in case she ever escaped. She did and the robo-dino-gods revived the five warriors, bestowing them with five dino bucklers, legendary weapons, and control over the robo-dino-gods. Their gods allowed the ZyuRangers to pilot them and give them orders, but the ZyuRangers remained subservient to their divine wills.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

A man named Zordon and a woman named Rita Repulsa fought 10,000 years ago. At the end of their battle, he sealed her in a dumpster and she trapped him in a tube, resulting in a bizzare stalemate. Despite having no hands, Zordon built a robot and an entire command center in the middle of California. When Rita escapes her prison, Zordon, in his ancient wisdom, chooses five teenagers to wield unlimited power, since teenagers are well known for their reliability and stable emotional states. The teens begin an epic struggle against Rita and her space monsters! Also, two bullies trip and fall into plates of food. A lot.

Show Synopsis Verdict:

The plot of Power Rangers is a shoddy adaptation of its source material. It takes most of its substance from the ZyuRanger plot and slaps the most basic cliches from American superhero stories onto it. Average teens, chosen to have powers, ancient struggle, and so on.

ZyuRanger is no King Lear, but at least it’s original. And the fact that the heroes are from an ancient time and the giant robots they pilot are their gods, which they worship, is at least strange enough to be interesting.

Winner: ZyuRanger

CATEGORY 2: THEME SONG

In the J-corner, a symphonic rock ballad heralding the entrance of ancient warriors.  In the A-corner, the best workout music after *Rock You Like a Hurricane* (totally awesome for bench press).

Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger

I really, really like this song. It’s orchestral with some smatterings of electric guitar. It’s catchy, fun and heroic. I memorized the lyrics just to sing along and learned some useful Japanese words too! (You never know when “eternal warrior” is going to pop up in a conversation.)

I really, really, really, really like this song, but…

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

This song is AWESOME!!

The crazy metal riffs get my blood pumping! I am convinced that this, in conjunction with the fight footage, is what made Power Rangers so instantly popular. To this day, if I hear this song, I have the sudden urge to jump up and start somersault chopping at random, which has been unfortunate for many of my former desk lamps.

Theme Song Verdict:

I gotta give this one to Power Rangers. SPOLIER ALERT! Power Rangers isn’t winning any more categories.

Winner: Power Rangers

CATEGORY 3: HEROES

In the J-corner, tribal monarchs trained the art of combat!  In the A-corner, charisma-free high schoolers trained in the art of study hall.

Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger

Our five heroes include the average one, the tall strong one, the limber one, the serious limber one, and the girl one. These warriors of legend never back down from a fight and are friends to all children. And I do mean all children. Each episode features a different kid with a disease/fear that the ZyuRangers cure/solve at the end of each episode/show.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

The American heroes include the leader one, the dancing one, the science one, the gymnastics one, and the kung fu one. In the intro, it is stated that these teenagers were chosen because they had “attitude.” However, their aforementioned attitude is one of civil service and and respect for authority.

Heroes Verdict:

At first glance, the Power Rangers are a bit more dynamic than their Japanese counterparts in that they have racial diversity and two female characters instead of just one. They have clearly defined character traits based on their interests (gymnastics, science, etc.) But actually, that’s as deep as these characters go.

The ZyuRangers, however, are very similar on the surface and have few obvious character traits or hobbies. But as the series progresses, each character gets several episodes focused on them in which they are put in tense, character-revealing situations. Again, not King Lear, but enough to show that the writers put some thought into who these characters are deep down in their squishy souls.

Winner: ZyuRanger

CATEGORY 4: VILLAINS

In the J-corner, a space witch and her team of gryphons, golems, goblins, vampires and leprechauns.  In the A-corner, a space witch and her team of gryphons, golems, goblins, vampires and leprechauns with annoying voices.

Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger

The evil side of ZyuRanger is all western mythological monsters commanded by one fantastic witch. If everything else about ZyuRanger were awful, one element would make it worth watching.

Space Witch Bandora.

She lives in a moon castle, rides a penny-farthing through the sky, wants to kill all children, and gets her power from SATAN! (I’m not joking.)

Oh, and she sings her own theme song in her delightfully raspy witchy voice. This puts her high up on my list of dream karaoke duet partners, right under John DiMaggio.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Each villain is the same as they are in ZyuRanger only renamed and redubbed. Poorly. Every name feels like it was the first thing the producers could think of. “That guy is gold. Let’s call him Goldar! This girl’s a scorpion. How about Scorpina? Genius!” Just another testament to the laziness of this localization.

Villains Verdict:

Checkmate.

Winner: ZyuRanger

CATEGORY 5: THE GREEN RANGER

WARNING! THIS FINAL SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR A 20-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN’S TV SHOW!!

In the J-corner, a ultra powerful older brother with a checkered past and a grim future.  In the A-corner, an ultra-powerful teenager whose dedication to practicing martial arts keeps him from using it until the last minute.

Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger

Name: Burai
Title: Prince of the Yamato Kingdom
Giant Robot Pal: Dragon Caesar
Bio: Hated his brother, woke from stasis to kill brother, changed his ways, fought alongside brother, discovered he had only weeks to live, quarantined in a room outside of time, only leaves timeless room when necessary.
Likes: Hating his brother, changing his ways, loving his brother, solitaire.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Name: Tommy Oliver
Title: Prince of the Juice Bar
Giant Robot Pal: Dragonzord
Bio: Moved to Angel Grove, got turned evil, got turned un-evil, fought alongside Power Rangers but only sometimes.
Likes: Martial arts, Kimberly, long hair, juice, helping the Power Rangers part-time (It’s a stop-gap job. Looks good on a resume.)

Green Ranger Verdict:

The whole saga surrounding Burai doesn’t end when he finally becomes good.  He finds out that he died while in suspended animation, so a weird god-boy named Clotho puts him in a Timeless Room with a green candle showing his remaining life span.  Every time he leaves the Timeless Room, a little bit of the candle gets used up.

This adds a lot of suspense to the the series not only in terms of battle, but also in the relationship between his brother Geki (The Red Ranger) and himself, making every moment between them brief and bittersweet.

Tommy’s character, on the other hand, was at the mercy of the localization team.  The drama of the bad-ranger-wrecks-up-the-place remains intact.  But after that saga, Tommy becomes kind of nonsensical.  If he’s so powerful, why isn’t he with the Power Rangers all the time?  Because *ZyuRanger* wrote Burai as a man living on borrowed time, Tommy is forced to constantly be “out practicing martial arts” or “giving his dog a back massage” until he’s called at the last minute.  None of this makes sense when a giant monster is crushing your city.

If you’re still not convinced about the superiority of the Burai story, it lies in the emotional culmination of his death.  After watching his life candle deplete over the course of twenty episodes, Burai decides to purposely use up the last of his life candle saving children (which he does by saving an unfortunate airborne baby!)  He dies in the arms of his younger brother Geki, to whom he relinquishes his signature golden armor and flute dagger.  This makes for more bittersweetness as the remainder of the series sees Geki using items from a brother he barely knew.

The death is so emphasized that there is even an entire episode featuring Burai’s sentient robo-dino-god, Dragon Caesar, grieving the loss of his master as he walks alone through a poppy field.

In the end, despite a letter-writing campaign from fans, Burai remained dead.  But his ghost appeared at the end of the series to encourage the ZyuRangers and use his ghost magic to open a dimensional gateway for plot device purposes.

Because of the absurdity of Tommy’s motivations and the purposeful thought put into Burai’s character arc, Burai is the better Green Ranger.  Sorry, Tommy fans.

Winner: ZyuRanger

FINAL CHAMPION: KYOURYUU SENTAI ZYURANGER

If you have a soft spot for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, believe me, I understand. While screening episodes in preparation for this article, I felt pangs of nostalgia intermingled with my groans and cringing.

But nostalgia notwithstanding, ZyuRanger is the clear winner in terms of overall quality.

Let it be said that Power Rangers was a fantastic business venture. Saban had all the action footage and merchandising done before he started. All he had to do was fill in the blanks. But in light of this, one has to wonder, with so much of the hard work done in advance, couldn’t Saban have filled in the blanks a little bit better? The writing, especially the dialogue, is tired and contrived. It seems the show is just killing time until the ZyuRanger action footage could be inserted, leaving each episode feeling rather lazy and hollow.

If Saban was as smart an artist as he is a businessman, he could have put together something truly unique and interesting using someone else’s footage. But he’s not and he didn’t.

ZyuRanger is certainly campy and childish in its own way, but is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. Even when it fails at what it’s trying to do, it still manages to entertain, leaving you watching long enough to eventually be surprised by its purposeful emotional pacing and technical attention to detail.

Comparisons aside, ZyuRanger stands on its own in terms of quality. At the very least, it’s an interesting peek at another culture’s nostalgia. At the very best, it’s an intriguingly genuine piece children’s TV with a mysterious charm factor. If giant robot gods and superhero melodrama are your thing, I encourage you to give the show a try. You may just find a bit more than you expected.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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The success of these shows and others has, however, given Japan a reputation for televised cruelty. In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer and the family go on a Japanese game show to win plane tickets back to America, only to have to undergo torture on camera then retrieve the tickets from a volcano.

ABC created a reality show called “I Survived a Japanese Game Show,” which put contestants through a fake physical challenge show-within-a-show. Japan had a reputation for extreme physical challenge TV, and from 1998 to 2002, a show called Susunu! Denpa Shonen (a punning follow-up to 1992-1998’s Susume! Denpa Shonen) took up that role and tried to take it just a few steps further. On the show, you could see two men try to escape from a secluded island with one of those swan paddle boats. You could see a Chinese comedian hitchhike from South Africa to Norway. And, most famously, you could see “Prize Contest Life” starring a man named Nasubi.

Life on Camera

“Prize Contest Life,” the show I want to talk about today, gathered a large roster of amateur comedians looking for a way to break into national television, and, in place of a normal audition, asked them to cast lots. A lanky Fukushima-born comedian named Nasubi (“eggplant,” after his long, oddly-shaped head) won the lottery, and was immediately taken to a car and blindfolded. When the blindfold came off, he was in a small apartment room. Behind the camera, the show producer told him to take off his clothes, all of them, and hand them over. Only then, after he is naked and stranded, is Nasubi told what the show’s premise is: “Can a man live on winning sweepstakes alone?” He laughed, and the door was shut.

Here is a complete inventory of Nasubi’s apartment at the start of the show:

• a shower
• a radio
• a telephone
• a gas burner
• a sink
• a large rack of magazines
• a giant stack of postcards
• a small table
• a single cushion.

The apartment walls were wired with cameras and a portable microphone hung around Nasubi’s neck. Besides those things, he had to win everything he needed in a prize contest, and he would be released after he had won a million yen (~$10,000 USD) worth of prizes (based on the alternate cash prize customarily offered in sweepstakes, which unfortunately means that a number of lower-value items Nasubi won were worth nothing, due to the lack of a cash alternative).

An edited summary of Nasubi’s experience would appear on Denpa Shonen for 8-10 minutes a week over the next 15 months, a dark comedy segment about a life spent writing letters (roughly 1,400 a week) and answering the door.

Every episode shows Nasubi waking up, telling the camera what day it is, writing sweepstakes letters (he quickly gives up on trying to win radio contests and instead devotes his time to magazine write-in sweepstakes), then receiving a series of delivered prize winnings which range from life-saving to worthless. The first episode shows him answer the door for a ramen delivery sent to the wrong address, a taunting moment for someone who ostensibly has no food for the first two weeks (viewers have to assume he received some food off-camera to get through this opening period). Once he finally wins a bag of rice, he realizes he has no pot to cook it in, so he experiments with eating rice raw before eventually finding a way to cook the rice over his gas burner in a packet of fiber jelly he had won the previous week.

Rice was always a welcome prize, but the show’s dark comedy comes mostly from the prizes Nasubi wins that do nothing to improve his desperate situation. Famously, in one of the first episodes he wins a bicycle, a prize that briefly excites him then throws him into a depression. What use is the bicycle for him when he has no clothes and the show may not even allow him to leave his apartment? He cycles the pedals a few times, then puts it in the corner of his room, where it will stay (and follow him, as he is moved from apartment to apartment by the production staff before fans can deduce where he lives).

In a later episode, he is extremely excited to win a television, his best prize yet. But when he plugs it in, he realizes the apartment has no antenna or cable connection, and every channel comes in as static. Months and months later, he eventually wins a VCR, and two VHS tapes, then eventually even a PlayStation One and the train simulator Densha de Go!. He plays his new game console for three days straight before realizing that it is taking too much time away from his letter writing, so he shelves it along with all his other useless prizes.

Because of the immediate shock of having his clothes taken away, one of Nasubi’s first goals was to win some clothes so he wouldn’t have to make his TV debut fully nude. He applied to win an apron in the first episode, but he did not win that particular sweepstakes and, in fact, he would never win any serious article of clothing. He wins a pair of lingerie panties early on (which are too small even for his spindly thin frame), then eventually a pair of formal shoes (which fit perfectly but don’t see an awful lot of use), then much later a pair of too-small Adidas sneakers and a belt. So he simply goes more than a year without wearing clothes, with a floating picture of an eggplant blocking his privates for the viewers at home. During a short-lived experiment at streaming Nasubi 24 hours a day to internet viewers, a large staff had to be on hand to move the censorship eggplant as he moved around. After Nasubi was finally given his clothes back on day 335, he tried them on, decided they felt weird, then took them back off.

It was on that day 335 that Nasubi won a small bag of rice which pushed him over the million yen he needed to win the challenge. The producers gave him one last surprise: he was flown to Korea then told to win his airfare to come back to Tokyo. After four more months, Nasubi was finally taken back home, where he was put into one last apartment room. As he began to get settled, the room’s walls collapsed outward, revealing him to a live audience who congratulated him on completing “Prize Contest Life.” He happily waved with one hand while holding his cushion over his genitals with the other.

Behind the Scenes

It is impossible to tell just how much might be faked in “Prize Contest Life” and all the reality show contests of Denpa Shonen. The show has complete control over what it presents as “reality” and the perception of realness is vital to enjoying the astonishing things that happen in a segment like Nasubi’s. Years before their Nasubi challenge, Denpa Shonen came under fire for reportedly flying their contestant from place to place while he was supposed to be hitchhiking across all of Eurasia (a theme they would use again when they had a man hitchhike across Africa then up to Norway). Viewers have asked “Did Nasubi really win dog food and inner tubes and four tires and lingerie without ever winning any real clothing for himself?” Nothing could have stopped the producers from sending Nasubi things he didn’t win with the delivery man, or intercepting prizes he actually earned.

It is almost certain, however, that Nasubi didn’t receive many breaks from any potential producer interference. He gets thinner, paler, hairier, and weirder as the show goes on, as his near-total isolation continued and he never took a step outside. Nasubi eventually revealed that he “thought of escaping several times,” and “was on edge, especially toward the end.” In an interview with video streaming site Hulu, the producer of Denpa Shonen said “[Nasubi] plunged into despair, but because he was naked and had no clothes, he couldn’t even run to the police for help. Aside from the five minutes that Nasubi was able to interact with a delivery person, his 24 hours were spent writing out postcards by himself in a dead-silent room. Imagine the elation that overcame him during those valuable few minutes when he would feel his only connection to the outside world through talking to the delivery person and checking the contents of the packages he would receive. It was at that moment when he would burst with jubilation and even start dancing to express his happiness. It’s in thrilling moments like these when we’re given a glimpse into the true nature of humans.” “Prize Contest Life” stands out for its especially cruel, psychologically torturous material, and there’s only so much that could have been done off-camera to make it less than it appears.

In fact, you can watch a lot of the episodes on YouTube. Just do a search for “Nasubi” and you can see for yourself. Don’t blame me if you end up losing the next couple hours of your life.

Life After “Prize Contest Life”

“Prize Contest Life” is an extreme example of the central premise of reality TV: Amateur actors (and even the occasional normal person) will undergo almost anything to become rich and famous. Nasubi gave an incredible amount for Denpa Shonen—15 continuous months of isolation—but what did he receive? Did he become rich and famous?

The answer is “sort of.” The several volumes of Nasubi’s Prize Contest Life Diary—which is constantly promoted, used, and voice acted within the show to provide an internal monologue for the solitary and therefore not always especially vocal Nasubi—reportedly sold well. He was nationally famous while his segment was running (Denpa Shonen reached 17 million viewers at its peak, with Nasubi marching at the front) but his fame faded quickly. He earned minor roles in several films and TV dramas at the national level, perhaps the most notable being his role in Kamen Rider W as Watcherman, an otaku blogger who rides a bicycle he won in a sweepstakes. But Nasubi can only really be called a celebrity in his home region of Fukushima, where he has done a number of shows and events.

Most recently, he attempted to climb Mount Everest to raise money for relief efforts after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and he has a new show called “Nasubi’s Question” which educates viewers on radiation-related topics. Denpa Shonen did not make him a fabulously successful person, but it seems to have given him enough exposure to give him a comfortable acting career and a public role in his home region.

To me, the show’s cruelty is only justified if we assume that the producers are helping Nasubi behind the camera in ways we never see. For instance, if he really went the first two weeks with no food at all, as it is presented in the show, then I think everyone would agree that is too cruel to film. The show is rife with those kinds of iffy moral situations that make it simultaneously thrilling and kind of horrible: If, as the show claims, Nasubi never knew what he was in for until it happened, then surely 15 months of filmed solitary confinement is too cruel to be entertainment. But surely he had some idea? What do you think? Is it okay to make a reality show like this? Let us know in the comments.

Sources:

• Hulu.com Blog – “A Closer Look at Denpa Shonen” Interview
• Metropolis – “Big in Japan: Nasubi”
• IMDb – Actor: Nasubi
• The Japan Times – “Those same old jokes aren’t funny any more”

I never imagined that I’d be one of those people – even once. Then on my last trip to Tokyo, in the space of less than a week I was followed around town by three different TV crews.

Chosen for Stardom

It was my first morning at a small traditional inn in Yanaka, in the old downtown of Tokyo, when I saw a sign at the front desk announcing that a TV crew was coming to interview guests. To some people this might have been exciting. Me, not so much. I have what you might call a face made for writing – I don’t even like the way I look in photos, so the last thing I want is to see what I look like on TV.

But the innkeeper asked me to please show up, and he was such a nice old guy, and after all, probably they’d just ask a couple of questions and it would take only a few minutes. It would be no big deal, right?

Here’s the thing I forgot: Just interviewing the foreigners isn’t enough. You also need to get that footage of them walking around Japan.

I’m pretty sure the reason they asked me was that I was the only one travelling alone, which would make the whole deal less complicated. But I thought I had a Get Out Of TV Free card: I was there as a reporter, working on a travel article about the neighborhood. In the US, reporters aren’t supposed to interview other reporters when they’re looking for regular people.

Well apparently there’s another cultural difference I wasn’t aware of: instead, my job actually seemed to make me more interesting to them. And it turned out that they were also working on a story about the inn and the neighborhood. So how could I say no?

The Quantum Physics of TV

You know the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that the mere act of observing something changes the thing being observed? That goes at least double when the observer is holding a TV camera. You could call it The Japanese TV Crew Principle: When a film crew says to go ahead with whatever you were going to do and they’ll follow you around and nothing will change, don’t believe it.

My plan was to go to the local shopping street and take photos for my article. I figured things wouldn’t start opening till at least 10 AM. But now I had three guys with a bunch of expensive equipment waiting around with nothing to do. How could I make them wait another two hours?

So the observers ended up changing everything about the plan. We headed out, taking photos along the way, and I pointed out bits of local interest, and it turned out that none of them had ever set foot in Yanaka before. Like nearly every other Tokyoite I know, they knew nothing about this part of the city. So there I was explaining that this winding street was called Hebi-michi because it was shaped like a snake, as if they were the tourists and I was the local expert.

When we got to the shopping street, of course everything was closed – but I had a sudden inspiration for the next change of plan. There had been a second sign on the innkeeper’s desk. It asked guests to sign a petition to save a big old cedar tree, an icon of the neighborhood, that was on a piece of property that had been bought by a developer. Immediately I had a vision of myself as the crazy American lady who became a local heroine by getting the tree on TV and inspiring all of Tokyo to save it.

I dragged the crew way the heck back across the neighborhood to this tree. They filmed it at great length, hanging on my every word as I told the story, to the extent that I started to worry that I was not exactly what you’d call an expert source on this particular topic. I was relieved to find an explanatory poster nearby and made them read it. I know it’s not really likely that this TV show is going to start a big Yanaka Cedar Preservation Movement, but if it does, at least they’ll have their facts straight.

Stage Directions

After another detour to a shrine, it was finally late enough to go shopping, so we headed back to the shopping street, Yanaka Ginza. Which brings us to another way in which you shouldn’t believe a film crew when they say they’ll just film you carrying on as normal. Yes, they will do that a good part of the time. But if you’re going to a shrine, of course they’re going to want a shot of you washing your hands with the ladle in your clumsy, unaccustomed way, whether you were planning to do so or not. And if you’re going to walk up the iconic stairs at Yanaka Ginza – which a film crew is likely to recognize from TV shows even if they’ve never been in the neighborhood before – of course they’re going to ask you to wait while they run ahead and get a shot of you from the front.

Some shots are just too important to trust to un-directed reality, I guess. And after three hours or so, the stage-managing had come to seem normal, and it had all actually been fun. Still, I was totally OK with the fact that after I took all the photos of crafts stores and bakeries and sweet shops that I needed, it was time to say that it had been great working with them and I was done now.

I was a bit bewildered when the guy in charge replied by asking if I was sure I didn’t want something to eat. Why did he care? Was he offering to buy me lunch in some very roundabout way? And then it dawned on me. “You want me to eat something so you can film it,” I said, and he kind of sheepishly agreed.

So, I bought and ate an apple turnover. Hey, I can take a baked good for the team with the best of them.

Strange Feeling of Deja Vu

The next day I was surprised to see that the sign about the TV crew was still there on the front desk. The innkeeper was pretty on the ball and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d forget and leave lying around. It wasn’t, as it turned out. There was going to be another, different film crew.

This one was doing a piece on what foreigners thought about the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, which of course would also need the obligatory footage of the foreigner walking about the city. No point in messing with success, I guess, so the innkeeper pointed me out.

This morning, my goal was the most un-Japanese destination possible: a Swiss chalet, built by a Swiss guy who’d lived in the neighborhood for many years, who I was hoping to interview. When we arrive, the owner is out, and the manager is understandably kind of freaked out by this bizarre parade of a foreign reporter followed by a crew of local reporters. It takes the head of the film crew about ten minutes just to convince him to call his boss and ask if he’s willing to talk to us.

When it turns out that the owner won’t be back for 30 minutes, the crew decides they can’t wait and heads back to the inn, and I’m relieved that I won’t be on a second TV show after all. And I definitely I got the best end of this bargain – they walked around in the rain for an hour and probably can’t use the footage, but since they were there to speak Japanese to the manager for me, I’m going to get my interview.

But when I return to the inn afterwards, I find out I have not escaped my fate: the crew is still there. So I get interviewed after all, expressing my profound opinions on the Tokyo Olympics including “I hate tearing down old things to build new things,” and “Isn’t Tokyo crowded enough already?”

Getting to Be A Habit

The next day I make a joke about “Where’s today’s film crew?” and get back to my solitary plans… but not for long. Two days later, there it is: the sign is on the desk again. Yes, it’s a third, different TV crew.

My plans for the day are to go to the zoo to see tanuki and to Yoyogi Park, so the big difference this time turns out to be the need to get permission to film from bureaucracies. The zoo won’t let them bring in the big cameras, so the two guys go ahead to Yoyogi to wait for us. Even for the translator to use her little camera, we need to make a long detour to get a press pass.

As a staff member fills out the forms, he asks us what exhibit we’re planning to film, and reveals to my disappointment they don’t have tanuki anymore. So instead I’m filmed at the other exhibit I visit every time I’m in Tokyo, the tapir and capybaras, and I console myself with the fact that since we had to come to this behind-the-scenes office, I got to take a photo of the zoo commissary and a bunch of neatly stored cleaning tools. (I know that might not thrill the average person who doesn’t make a special trip to see tanuki, but since I used to work as a zookeeper, to me it was pretty cool.)

After lunch, it’s time for more stage management: the translator films me walking into Ueno Station, and then when we get off the train, asks me to wait while she goes out and finds the rest of the film crew so they can film me walking out of the station.

And then, there’s another detour: we get in a car and drive to an office the other side of the huge park. While the translator is filling out the paperwork for permission to film, I discover that this is also where you get a permit for a nearby dog park. So now it’s my turn to change the plan: the crew has to stand outside the fence of a huge dog park while I play with a pug named Pu.

Prepare for Your Close-up

Eventually I leave the pug and we drive all the way back to where we started. They film me walking around the park, and we finally finish up with an interview. Which brings us to the other things to keep in mind, aside from the Japanese TV Crew Principle, if you ever find yourself in this situation.

The first is, don’t get your hopes up about how much screen time you’re going to get. As one translator explained, they have to keep the cameras running the whole time, because they’ll kick themselves if something cool happens and they miss it. The third crew was with me from first thing in the morning to the late afternoon. The end result? As one of my Japanese friends who saw it reported, no more than two minutes of me eating ice cream and looking at a capybara.

The other is that no matter what their story is about, they’re going to ask you what you like about Japan and how more foreigners could be convinced to travel there.

For me they’re both impossible questions to answer. For the latter I want to say, why are you asking me? I’m someone who IS travelling here. I can’t put myself in the head of someone who doesn’t want to come to Japan. And it sounds awfully ugly-American-y, even if true, to say that what most Americans probably want is for the Japanese to speak more English.

And any halfway accurate answer to the first question would be way too long and weird for a sound-bite. I don’t think anyone really wants to hear that I wanted to see the tanuki because they exist at the intersection of my interests in yokai and in how much the Japanese seem to love uncommon animals.

So I mostly stuck to an awkward shrug and “I really love the food,” and while it sounded kind of dumb, I’m pretty sure it was for the best.

—

All photos by the author, Linda Lombardi

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Bonus Wallpapers!

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The show? 欽ちゃん＆香取慎吾の全日本仮装大賞, also known as Masquerade in English.

The show’s premise is familiar: teams of people compete to wow judges and audiences alike with their talent. What makes Masquerade different from America’s Got Talent (other than Nick Cannon and a Snapple™ sponsorship) is its focus on incredibly creative sketches full of clever visual tricks.

These sketches take place anywhere from under the sea to a skydiving plane flying high above the ground. Not to be clichéd, but the only limit to these sketches seems to be the contestants’ imagination.

Fortunately for those of us who can’t catch Masquerade on Japanese TV, the show has an official YouTube channel full of some of its coolest, most imaginative sketches. You might even recognize some of them!

Many of the sketches are done with stagehands that blend into the background, very much in the Japanese tradition of kuroko (黒子), the stagehands dressed in all-black in traditional Japanese theater.

While many of the sketches are incredibly impressive, some of them can just be plain bizarre:

From the imaginative sketches to towering meter that fills up after every performance, Masquerade has a plethora of endearing qualities that make it clear why the show has spent decades on the air.

For more, check out Masquerade’s official YouTube channel!

Wallpapers

Want the excitement of Masquerade as your desktop background? Our incredible illustrator Aya has you covered!

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Wallpaper (2560×1440)

Advertising Done Right

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The videos posted here are just the last five compilation videos released on their YouTube channel. There are a handful of good CMs in this video above, but I’d have to say my favorite is the Maple Story one at the very end.

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Oh man. So many good CMs in this one. I don’t think I can pick just one. The face wash one, the lip animals, and the Merry Christmas one near the end were the ones that stood out to me the most I think. But like I said, lots of good ones in here.

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Tommy Lee Jones! I haven’t even watched the rest of this compilation and I’m calling it right now. Tommy Lee is one of the CM kings. And then I saw the boob commercial. And then there was a Doraemon commercial, another classic. And then there was a World Order CM too. Dang, Japan has a lot of awesome commercials. The light commercial at the very end was pretty cool too.

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Well, the Obama commercial definitely takes the cake in this set. Other than that, the CMs here were just pretty average I think. Decent but not great. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing these all the time instead of the ho-hum ones we get in America.

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I have to admit, I’m a little partial to the Softbank CM near the start of this one just because it has Golden Bomber in it. If you don’t know who they are, check out the last video in this post here. Hilarious. Also Jack Daniel’s because reasons.

You can check out JPCMHD (Japanese Commercials in HD) on their YouTube channel and also on their Tumblr page. The compilation videos are released on both, whereas each standalone CM is only put up on their Tumblr. In no time you’ll be wasting your life away, 15 seconds at a time.

So tell me, which CM was your favorite? How do Japanese commercials compare to those in your home country? Let us know in the comments!