In January 1998, 22-year-old Japanese comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu went to what he thought was a normal audition for a TV show. He was known by his stage name Nasubi, which means “eggplant” in Japanese, and he wanted this chance to help start his comedy career. But instead, he was taken to a small apartment, told to take off all his clothes, and told to survive only on prizes he could win from magazine contests until he got items worth 1 million yen, which was around $8,000.
What Nasubi did not know was that his whole time in the apartment was being shown on TV to the entire country. The show was called Susunu! Denpa Shonen, which means “Do Not Proceed! Crazy Youth.” It aired on Nippon Television from 1998 to 2002 and was made by Toshio Tsuchiya, who people saw as the king of Japanese reality TV at the time. The part with Nasubi was called “A Life in Prizes.”
As per Lad Bible, for 335 days, Nasubi lived alone with nothing but stacks of magazines and postcards. He filled out hundreds of contest forms every day, sometimes 100 to 300 forms a day, hoping to win things he needed to survive. Some of his early prizes included things like dog food, which he ate when he had no other food. The show’s producers covered his private parts with a cartoon eggplant image for TV viewers. He had no idea that over 17 million people were watching him every week.
His mind and body suffered badly
Nasubi’s health got much worse during the time he was locked up. He lost a lot of weight and hair, felt pain all the time, and felt very lonely. In interviews shown in the 2023 documentary The Contestant, Nasubi said he often wished he could die during his time alone.
Producer Tsuchiya had told his workers not to talk to Nasubi, on purpose pushing him to feel more alone so they could get better footage for the show. The show was one of the earliest and most harsh examples of survival reality television, pushing people to their limits in ways that came before later Western shows.
#NowWatching: THE CONTESTANT (dir. Clair Titley, 2023) about Nasubi (aka Tomoaki Hamatsu) & his time on the cult Japanese reality show DENPA SHONEN: A LIFE IN PRIZES, in which he lived in a tiny room, naked on camera 24/7, surviving only on prizes won through magazines pic.twitter.com/weLM9V35TM
— 𝖋𝖎𝖑𝖒 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖋𝖎𝖘𝖍𝖓𝖊𝖙𝖘 (@FilmandFishnets) May 3, 2024
When Nasubi finally got to his goal of 1 million yen worth of prizes, the producers moved him to another apartment in South Korea. There, he had to do the whole thing again to earn enough money for a ticket back to Japan. He spent a few more months in this second place before the producers finally stopped the show. In total, Nasubi spent 15 months alone and naked.
The big reveal happened when producers put Nasubi in a room that looked just like his old apartments, but this time it was on a TV studio stage. When the walls fell down, he saw himself in front of a live audience of hundreds of people clapping and laughing. His first words were, “Why are they laughing?”
While he was going through all of this, his diary about what was happening had been published and became a bestseller in Japan, but he knew nothing about it. The show came before many ideas people think of as the first reality TV shows in Western TV, setting up scary patterns for the type of show.
Years later, producer Tsuchiya called Nasubi and said he was sorry for what he did. In interviews for The Contestant, Tsuchiya said he went too far when he was trying to make groundbreaking TV. Nasubi has said that while what happened was very hard on him, he chose to accept his past instead of staying angry. He told reporters, “I did not want to write postcards anymore. I’ve done enough for a lifetime.”
