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Nasubi - The Ultimate Survivor
Skip writes: "Although it was broadcast in 1998, I don't think many people outside of Japan have heard of Nasubi. In this reality program a young comedian was locked naked and alone in a tiny apartment with a stack of magazines ,postcards and pens. He then had to survive solely living off prizes he won in competitions (hence the magazines and postcards). It took him over a year to reach his goal of a million Yen worth of prizes. He received no help from the producers and went long stretches (sometimes 2 weeks!) without eating. Compared to this Survivor is like Club Med."
> ...seen everything
no you haven't - there were however, 50 staff members which had to censor various bits. eech. every day for a year...
All the time people are trying to get onto Denpa Shonen so they can do weird things. Some of the segments on now are:
1) Two women travelling around the world while only relying on the advice of fortune tellers.
2) A wannabe Japanese comedian is locked in a room and has to learn Swahili so he can give a stand-up performance in Kenya. He only gets food when he can answer a question given by one of the two Kenyan people that come in three times a day.
3) A girl wants to be a gymnast and has to exercise and practice on a high-bar to get food (although I don't think they're making the food part so strict now).
Japanese shows are famous for making people do weird and sometimes horrible ordeals. But, the people on these shows know about it almost all of the time. You can compare this with talk shows in the US where there are surprise paternity tests, shows where someone expresses love for someone else, etc.
Anywhere in the world people do dumb and outrageous things to get on television and sometimes they harm themselves. But, that's their own fault not anyone else's.
One sad thing that did happen (and not mentioned in the article) is about 4 months ago some comedian on a show in Osaka was trying to carry a wet fish across some REALLY cold place in Hokkaidou and ended up getting frostbite on his fingers. They had to be cut off. But, that is one of the only bad examples I've ever seen of something going wrong on a television show.
japan is at the forefront of cultural and media evolution. they are the most creative people when it comes to socially engineering viral content. if you like japanese pop culture and nasubi you should take a look at its darkside sometimes: http://www.stileproject.com extremely educational.
After finishing, Nasubi was asked what he most wanted. He said kimchi and yakiniku (Korean spicy cabbage and Korean BBQ). So the producers flew him to Korea, gave him a big urn of kimchi, a huge yakiniku meal and..... A chance to do it all over again, but this time in Korea where he doesn't speak the language. The lunatic accepted.
Some of the funny things about that show I remember was the time he finally won some clothes. He won a pair of shorts and he was so happy at first but then he realized that he just liked dancing around naked too much to wear them, so they ended up on the wall. Speaking of dancing, the producers always added a huge eggplant (which is ``Nasubi'' in Japanese) instead of the more western fig leaf, always cracked me up.
The ``exposure'' has done him good as he is now one of the official 12 famous TV people on Jp TV shows.
Oooo. I bow to your seniority ;)
A million yen is abit less than $10,000, if you're not up on your exchange rates.
$10K for over a year's work doesn't seem like such a good trade to me.
Living off the internet for a year? Big freaking deal; there's almost nothing you can't buy online these days. Even comparing such a mundane 'stunt' to this japanese challenge is totally insulting.
"Look at me, guys, I can like for a whole year just from Stop & Shop and Sears! Wheeeee!"
Is it just me, or have 'reality' shows gone off the deep end lately? 'Robinson' (or 'survivor' as the american version is called) had at least some kind of idea behind it (semi-recreate being stranded on an island). It is ironic that the latest crop of 'reality' shows are based on premises that would immediately be rejected by a B-grade sci-fi producer as being far too outlandish...
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
He didn't win any clothes, nor did he ever win any bread. Rice and womens underwear apparently are more common prizes in Japan.
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Insert Witty Sig Here
of starvation.
I never win prizes when I enter competitions. Anyway, did they let him out to claim his prizes, and if he was naked, how did that go down with the competition organisers. A lot of them want a photo shoot with the winner of the competition....!!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"I don't know about anyone else, but I'm taking some Eric Roberts home in a doggy bag!"
--Mr Garrison
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
We either need a 50% reduction in the population of this planet or we need about 4 more planets to grow onto. This dumb shit we think of to fill the boring time while piled up six deep amongst each other all the time is just sucking up useful time.
[Saint Stephen]
So he just hung out around the apartment eating sticky rice and wearing women's undies....
(Post truncated due to an attack mof hysteria....)
I would think that the "please wait 6-10 weeks for delivery of prize" would be a barrier here in the states, as well as the fact that we don't really give away food and household items as magazine prizes.
I can see the headline from the american version right now..... "Chuck Smith, the American who decided to live off magazine contests, died of starvation today. His body was discovered in front of the 45" home theatre he won last week. He is survived by his wife and two children, now on their third cruise to the Bahamas. Alan Smithee, producer of the show remarked, "It's really amazing, here's this guy who has won over $200,000 in magazine contests over the last 9 months, but he can't order a pizza." The show plans to auction off the 7 cars, 2 motorcycles, and the 274 Brittany Spears cd's won while Mr. Smith was still alive. "We would have auctioned off the kitchen appliances he won too, but he tried to eat those." said Smithee.
You have a man whose only clothes are womans underwear(That he won).
He lives in an empty room with no human contact.
He has millons of people watching but doesn't know it.
He has to write around 6000 postcards a month just to TRY to stay alive.
He has a Playstation with ONE really BAD game.
He has a TV but cannot get a signal.
He has a VCR and two videos, An Aerobics video and a cycling video.
Sorry but this is about as close to hell on earth as you could come, coupled with the fact that he had to eat dog food at one point then at another they moved him but forgot to move his rice, I'm surprised this guy is still alive.
I wouldn't be surpised if the next we hear about him will be a news article about a deranged gunman killing thousends of people on a subway yelling out "I FEAR NO HELL NOW!"
That the show's producers didn't make him wear a mask (surgically attached perhaps) during the show to prevent him being recruited by another television program.
Or would anyone like to willingly try to survive such a way without a fat reward afterwards? 'Publicity' does not count -- being seen naked and hungry amongst piles of papers on TV is a doubtful addition to a resume, imho.
The really sad part of the whole story is that the show had enough audience to last for a year.
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
It would be nice for this story to be backed up by facts. I was under the impression that nasubi was aware of what was going to happen to him (or at least aware that he was going be "up-shit-creek-without-a-paddle" for a very long time), and he voulunteered. So do not take this seriously. As much as the writer of the article wants you to believe, NTV (and Japan as a whole) is not *that* cruel.
Nasubi enjoyed what he did. He enjoyed the attention he got after it as well. He could of chosen to back out at any time, and he didn't.
Japan has some bad tv shows. It has shows that people risk injury to win prizes. But, it is all closely monitored. The producers know what's going on. They know they'll be screwed if something bad happens to anyone. People like the attention. They are getting what they want. That is the real problem here, people doing stupid things to be famous for a day.
Better to stay silent, and let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt
the romans watched gladiators fight to the death for sport. how far away from that are we really?
Not far at all. The arenas are covered in ice and the gladiators are called "hockey players", but it is still entirely a blood sport.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
How exectly is hockey a blood sport?
Have you ever seen a professional game of hockey? Most of the spectators are entirely uninterested by the game until fights start breaking out.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Nasubi was obviously fairly suited for such an ordeal, but how about someone from a western country? Someone overweight? Would our western psyche be able to handle the stress? Because one thing that I am certain of, is that people will watch it, many people even. It's more extreme than "Operation Robinson" even though it lacks the "I don't have a life or interesting friends so I will watch morons on TV instead" genre headed by shows like Big Brother.
The second question, would the amount of competitions in the wester hemisphere be enough? Would it even be easier? Would they do a complete internet based version? Only prizes won online would be ok? When I think of it, maybe they should choose a girl for the next show ^_^
I also have a clip called "Guess Whats In Your Hat?" Two Japanese men would wear a wicket basket on their heads. The bottom of the basket was cut out. The game show host would put various living thing in their hat, and the contestants would have to guess what they were.
Of course it was impossible to guess. The winner was the one who didn't freak out on hearing he had several very large black scorpions crawling around his scalp.
In the words of Fark.com "What the hell is wrong with the Japanese?"
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
"In America you reward knowledge! In Japan, we punish ignorance!"
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Larry Niven was right about the death penalty eventually being applied for traffic infractions... He just failed to see that the public's hunger for bloodier and bloodier entertainment would outpace research into safe universal transplants.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
That's coming to NBC this fall as "Lost".
So where are these magazines that have the boring prizes...
Why not animatronic RealDolls being tortured, raped, or murdered?
Hidden camera sex scavenger hunts?
Propaganda "news" programs whitewashing or glorifying hate crimes?
Plenty of other possibilities to make a buck pandering to those who can't get enough misery and degradation. The site mentioned that programs involving human suffering are extremely popular in Japan. I bet US producers are not far behind on this.
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You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
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What, me worry?
Nasubi was only one segment on a show Denpa Shonen which included many survivor type themes.
Denpa Shonen is famous for sending of Hitchhikers on cross continent treks, forcing them to earn money for food on their own. They even sent two guys from the tip of South America to Alaska, which took well over a year.
The hitchhikers are always follwed by a cameraman and go through some amazingly harsh ordeals to get where they're going. Best of all, no tribal council.
"When he won a video deck to go with his TV, he was able to watch his two videos--an exercise video and a cycling tape. He saw a woman for the first time in 10 months. In November, he won two rolls of toilet paper, a huge moment in his life!"
Anyone care to guess what use he put this toilet paper to?
After two weeks without food, another human being starts to look quite tasty indeed. "We drew lots, honest!"
My blog
...okay, if this were you, would you not be severely ticked? Taken prisoner for commercial purposes, and exploited for over a year? I'm sorry, but i'd have had to kill someone sometime in there....
...seen everything
I disagree on your comment that 'cartoons are for kids.'
:p )
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Cartoons originated as an adult form of entertainment. By 'adult' I dont mean a pornographic form, I mean it in the true sense of the word that denotes maturity.
Looney Tunes used to be played before movies in theatres during WWII along with newsreels. After TV became more common, cartoons became the babysitter of countless children around the world. Why? The themes and subtle political messages are lost on youths and all that is gained is a collection of images that is mildly entertaining.
Cartoons then became more kid-oriented in the late 1960's and then exploded in the 70's. I.E. Scooby doo, smurfs, School House Rock!, etc.
Oh whatever.. I am sure this will be replied to by one of the many fine individuals that plague this site.(anti-semite trolls, anti-social trolls, anti-troll trolls
Have fun people, dont be so cynical- Tom Burnett has the monopoly on cynicism anyway!
-Mike
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...recall the guy who was to live exclusively off of internet purchases for a year or something? (Some slashdot story covered the end of it.) In the end support for the stunt failed and the guy was NEVER paid what he was promised?! So while *he* survived, his supporters and sponsors didn't.
Unexpected irony there, ne?
DotCom Guy, yet another fucked company.
naked japanese men on tv relying on magazine clippings for survival!? will SOMEBODY think of the CHILDREN!?
Oh crap. I was surfing the interenet, purely for research, and it looks like Mexico got there first. Appearently there's a bar in Tijauana....
Yes, I know Bad_CRC wan't the family values flamebaiter. But honestly, there is more than enough hyperbole to go around. When you see a woman forced to copulate with a bull (which probably killed her) as a public event, then, and only then, may one finally sound the alarm that the Canadians will soon be sacking our cities.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
From my freshman semester at college HOW exactly?
I don't know about your freshman year, but I can tell you how it's different from mine: when the dirty, unshaven guy in women's underwear was rolling around the tires he won from a magazine contest, and singing songs to his rice in my freshman year dorm, none of us had a video camera around.
Normaly I'd let this slide. But why is someone who's using a racial slur and a media entrenched view of a foreign culture complaining about moral lackings?
I don't think I should have to point out that sexual themes in Japanese media are in high demand in the United States. Nor should I have to point out that violence, bigotry, and a lust for judgemental puritanism more than compensates for this nations so called moral stance on sexual issues.
In reguards to the Japanese conduct in the second world war I need only point out that the victors write the history books. While the Japanese did conduct horrible bio-warfare experiments in unit 731 the United States kept knowledge of unit 731 secret for more then 40 years after the war so it's research could be used in US biowarfare technology. The Japanese tortured and killed American POWs while we stuffed the nozels of our flamethrowers into their concrete bunkers and burned them out. And while Japanese troops burned tortured and raped the city of Nanking to the ground the United States skipped the "raped" step and simply burned and tortured the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagisaki with nuclear weapons and powerfull blasts of radiation that are still causing painfull deaths to rare cancers today.
Beware, the moral highground is a tretcherous slope and footing can be very unstable.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
I wouldn't say that the Japanese have no value of the individual. Rather, the Japanese value traits in the individual that we find alien. Tranquility, docility, conformity. Many portions of Japanese culture focus on the individual to an overwhelming extent. Dating back to the Tokugawa period we have traditional Samuri combat and Kendo. Kendo is primarily a one on one sword fighting art, concentrating on a single opponent and the individual contest of skill. In more modern times Sumo wrestling pits the skills of two enormous individuals against each other.
Japanese conduct in WWII, while inexcuseable, is explainable. Bushido, or the warrior way, dictated that the greatest service a warrior could render his country was his death (kind of a loosing strategy there if you ask me). Surrender was unaccecptable, this is easily proven by looking at the surrender rates of Japanese vs American troops in the war. The Japanese surrendered something like 1 out of 20 casualties (killed or captured for this statistic). The US surrendered more like 12 in 20.
Here's where it gets weird. The Bushido considered the sword the soul of the samuri. Japanese troops c. 1940 had this weird idea that they were 14th century samuri. Thus, surrender (and the giving up of the sword/gun/whatever) was the loss of the soul. The POW was less then a person. Many in Japan would consider death, even an insanely painfull one preferable to capture (see hari-kari, the ritual suicide of the shamed samuri).
This goes a long way to explaining (not excusing) the conduct of the Japanese toward Allied POWs. Now we'll move on to Korea.
Don't tell the Japanese this, it still gets many of them rather pissed off, but the Koreans are ethnicly very close to the Japanese. This is because of Japanese interaction, possession of, occupation of the Korean peninsula over the centuries. Now, for some reason I've never quite understood, the Japanese have developed some great and personal hatred of the Koreans. Perhaps this has to do with the idea of the "Purity of the Japanese Race" (a popular notion c. 1931) or maybe it's just blind nationalism. Who knows? Point being that Korea is rarely a good example of Japanese war conduct. It's like saying that all US foreign policy during the Cold War was identical to US foreign policy toward communist nations.
Anyway, hope that helps. Just wanted to clear up a few points with the above post.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
That just gave me an idea for a good Survivor series: Stick a bunch of 'normal' people in the general population of a maximum security prision and see how long they last. I'd watch that.
Yeah it would kind of be like a real life Mystery Science Theater 3000
I wish I was making up this stuff but I'm not.
At the time I was a teenager, so I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Now I'm in my early 20's, and I can definitely feel the guys' pain. :)
Think about this a second. A litle kid get suspended for making a "gun" gesture, goes home, and watche survivor or x-files or some ultraviolent TV show or movie. Talk about mized messages...
I'm the stranger...posting to