The Strange, Sad Tale of Nasubi, the Real Life Japanese Truman Show

Posted 9 Jan, 2008 under Strange by Shea Gunther

nasubi.jpg

The Japanese have some crazy ass TV shows. I stumbled on the story of Nasubi the other day and couldn’t believe what I was reading.

Back in the pre-Y2K days of 1998 Japanese TV producers held an audition for a new show. A comedian named Nasubi (Japanese for eggplant) “won” the audition and was blindfolded and brought to a one room apartment somewhere in Tokyo. The apartment was stocked with a stack of magazines and a pile of postcards. Nasubi was told to strip naked and left with a cushion, a table, a small radio, a telephone, and some notebooks pens. He had no food.

Nasubi was told that in order to escape his prison he had to win a million Yen ($10,000) in prizes via magazine mail-in contests. This was also the only way he could eat- his first two weeks were without calories until he won some jelly in a contest (what kind of contest prize is jelly?).

Nasubi soon won a 5kg bag of rice but didn’t have anything to cook it with. He worked up a prison style cooking method using a cup of water and rice placed on the heater. He also won a TV set but didn’t have a cable or antennae. When he finally won a VCR the only videos he had were an exercise and cycling video.

The whole story is nucking futs. The guy was locked away for 15 months all by himself, forced into a starvation diet, and had his entire ordeal broadcast on TV and the internet. His diary became a best seller on the outside world.

At the end of his show Nasubi was placed in yet another small enclosed space, where out of force of habit he took off his clothes. Imagine the mindfuck he went through when the walls fell away and he found himself in front of a large studio audience, where he was finally told the details of what had happened to him over the past year and change.

Nasubi’s adventures makes Survivor seem pretty tame. Head over to the Quirky Japan Home Page to read the whole story, if anything it’s even stranger than I’ve been able to write here.

Link [The Quirky Japan Home Page] & Nasubi on Wikipedia

Comments

7 Responses to “The Strange, Sad Tale of Nasubi, the Real Life Japanese Truman Show”

  1. Hexfire on January 9th, 2008 5:10 pm

    Wow thats an extreme edition of survivor there. Did he end up getting paid any royalties from the show? Did he at least get to keep his contest prizes lol.

  2. Inemuri: The Japanese Art of the Workplace Power Nap on January 9th, 2008 9:45 pm

    [...] not the Japanese. They may have crazy ass TV shows and an unnatural affinity for strange robots, but they’re surprisingly enlightened on the [...]

  3. Chronus on January 12th, 2008 2:41 am

    God, most high security prisons aren’t that bad.
    That’s a severely fucked up way to live…. damn.

  4. ric on January 12th, 2008 3:14 pm

    I saw the show every week and loved it and now Nasubi has become some what of a T.V. star.

  5. Brett McCluskey on January 17th, 2008 10:35 pm

    And for his next stunt . . .
    http://squidoo.com/japaneselearn or
    http://squidoo.com/japanesevocabulary7

  6. Brett McCluskey on February 1st, 2008 7:59 pm

    Dude they are so cruel I forgot to mention it
    http://squidoo.com/ghettogrammar101
    http://squidoo.com/japanesedays

  7. Japanite on May 16th, 2008 7:46 pm

    The bizarre stories from Japan can always surprise you completely.

snarfd will never publish or share your address.