What Nasubi didn’t realize is that segments were going out weekly to a large television audience. Once he’d “won” ¥1 million (about $10,000) in prizes he’d be able to leave his imprisonment and they would edit together a segment about his experience and call it “Sweepstakes Life.”Īll he was offered, in exchange, was a chance at fame. And toilet paper, which he didn’t win until about ten months in! He had to win anything he used or ate (the crew probably provided him with food, but not much, apparently). He was also given a rack of magazines and a stack of stamped postcards so that he could enter commercial sweepstakes to get things that he needed. He was provided with a radio, phone, sink, shower, toilet, gas burner, a small table and one cushion. Nasubi’s genitals were covered with a digital eggplant, a reference to his nickname for his elongated face.
In it, Nasubi, an aspiring Japanese comedian-who it should be noted, auditioned for and agreed to this-was forced to live in a studio apartment, unclothed, with no supplies for a year and a half. Think of it as the naked, solitary confinement version of Big Brother. “Denpa Shōnen teki Kenshō Seikatsu” (“a life out of prizes”) was the best known segment of the show. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the program remains an iconic part of Japanese television history. The producers of this “torture”-themed reality series, which ran from 1998 to 2002, took things so far that the government actually stepped in and cancelled it. Even for a culture well-known for its sadistic game shows, Japan’s Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (進ぬ！電波少年) still stands out.
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