The Contestant – Storyville (BBC4)
Back in the days when we laughed openly at foreigners and their peculiar ways, the strangest sight on television was a Japanese game show called Endurance.
Contestants, all of them male, volunteered to undergo inventively sadistic tortures, with Clive James On TV airing the goriest excerpts every week to the astonishment and delight of ITV audiences.
Some of the punishments, filmed all over the world, were merely brutal: cannonballs were lobbed at their testicles, and platefuls of frozen spaghetti were served to players immersed in ice baths.
Others were Freudian nightmares. In one, they were tied to crucifixes before rats were released into Perspex boxes on their naked chests.
At the same time, Dutch children fired tiny wooden clogs at the men’s legs with powerful elastic bands.
Those children looked traumatised at what they were being made to do. In 1982, Clive and his millions of viewers (and yes, of course I was one) thought this was hilarious.
Back in the days when we laughed openly at foreigners and their peculiar ways, the strangest sight on television was a Japanese game show called Endurance (above)
Contestants, all of them male, volunteered to undergo inventively sadistic tortures, with Clive James On TV airing the goriest excerpts every week to the astonishment and delight of ITV audiences
Producer Toshio Tsuchiya (pictured), a man who gleefully compares himself to Satan and revels in the fear and hatred he inspires in everyone who works for him, smirked as he described how in 1997 he created a format so cruel, it must surely be outlawed by the Geneva Convention
After a few years, British TV executives began to feel squeamish about this and Endurance vanished from our screens.
But in Japan, as The Contestant (BBC4) revealed, ever more extreme torments were being devised.
Producer Toshio Tsuchiya, a man who gleefully compares himself to Satan and revels in the fear and hatred he inspires in everyone who works for him, smirked as he described how in 1997 he created a format so cruel, it must surely be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
He tricked a 21-year-old wannabe stand-up comedian, Tomoaki Hamatsu, into tackling a solitary confinement challenge called A Life In Prizes.
Trapped in an apartment room, he had no clothes and no bed, and nothing to eat but crackers and water.
Whatever he needed to survive, Tomoaki had to win by entering magazine competitions.
He spent his days filling in forms and sending off entries, while slowly starving and going out of his mind.
Although he knew there were cameras in the room, this gullible and desperate young man had no idea that footage from his cell was being screened weekly on one of Japan’s biggest game shows.
He tricked a 21-year-old wannabe stand-up comedian, Tomoaki Hamatsu (above), into tackling a solitary confinement challenge called A Life In Prizes
The Contestant (BBC4) revealed, ever more extreme torments were being devised
Trapped in an apartment room, Hamatsu had no clothes and no bed, and nothing to eat but crackers and water
Soon, as he became an international celebrity, his life was livestreamed around the clock via the internet.
Part of his appeal to audiences was his unusual face, with its long jaw. Bullied all his life for his appearance, Tomoaki’s nickname was Nasubi, meaning ‘aubergine’ or ‘eggplant’.
To hide his naked genitals, the Japanese broadcaster used a cartoon aubergine.
Incredibly, Nasubi lived this celebrity hermit life for 15 months, oblivious to his fame — eating whatever he could win, whether that was rice or dog food.
The moment when he was set free, in front of a howling studio audience that included the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent, Juliet Hindell, was one of the most excruciating scenes I’ve ever watched.
Tsuchiya claimed this was a momentous episode in TV history. I was left, not for the first time, wondering at the depravities of the small screen.
