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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."
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.
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.
So where are these magazines that have the boring prizes...
What, me worry?
...seen everything
...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?
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.