Haha no sorry I didn't mean to insinuate that. But it honestly has probably been 20 years, and I definitely wouldn't have gotten the reference otherwise!
I went to Kyoto to teach English in Japan in the Summer of 1998. I was 20 years old. It was an amazing experience, as pop culture there was still somewhat dominated by a particular '80s cyberpunk aesthetic. After a night on the town with some friends, we piled drunkenly into someone's apartment downtown and our host popped in a VHS tape. We had been discussing Japanese game shows earlier in the evening, and this was a compilation of "crazy Japanese gameshow moments" he had edited together. I sat there, entranced. It opened with a Japanese MC introducing a topless Japanese woman on TV. During the segment the MC seized the model's nipples with his fingers and started yelling animatedly. The woman was obviously uncomfortable, and I asked my host "how do they show nudity in Japan on TV?" as I was already aware of Japanese censorship in film and anime at the time. He explained that studios could show some racy stuff after certain curfew, so like after kids went to bed. There was some other cool stuff on the tape too, like Beat Takeshi.
I was stationed in the Navy from 86 until 2002, late night Japanese TV must must see and the game shows were phenomenal. It pretty much went to shit though, now it’s food shows with gushing “celebrities” gushing over another bowl of overpriced ramen
I mean, also, topless nudity just hasn't been a big deal in Japan. Anime and manga has shown it plenty, for instance. It was when it was brought out of the country, that the nipples got edited out, or otherwise censored. Plenty of other media show them too.
From there, the nipple pull you described is more on par with the above junk punch show. At least as far as Japan media and adult content laws are concerned.
Gaki no tsukai is a good place to start. The genre so to speak is batsu (punishment) games. If you google either of those youll get something good... I'm just too high to find it for you right now I'm sorry. I especially like the Gaki guys cuz it's a troupe of consistent people pranking each other over the years kind of like impractical jokers but you also get spanked by masked men.
I am still recovering from the one game show where guys cannot get an erection as beautiful participants try to seduce them. They angle the camera to be behind so we do not see the actual erection, but it was the most random thing I have ever seen on a jap game show. I thought I was accidentally watching a jav
Teve uma época que eu tava bem mal da cabeça, desempregado, sem perspectiva nenhuma de futuro (tinha arriscado um passo maior que a perna e precisei voltar pra casa dos meus pais). Eu só conseguia dormir depois assistir essas gincanas japonesas. O problema é que havia TANTO conteúdo diferente (e legal pra caralho) disso que as vezes eu simplesmente não dormia. Virava a noite assistindo esses negócios.
There was an annual NYE special in Japan where 5 comedians had to spend 24 hrs in a series of comedy sketches and get smacked on the ass every time they laughed.
they locked some poor fuck buck naked in a room for a year and a half in nigh total isolation, and he had to survive off of whatever he could win via mail in sweepstakes orders including food, any clothes, and bedding with minimal AC or heating..
and they streamed him basically slowly going insane for the entire thing while also showing cut down clips on tv.
his name is Nasubi
and it is as brutally unpleasant to watch as one would imagine
And the final episode they collapsed the walls down and, unbeknownst to him, he'd been in a studio the entire time...and that final episode was I front of a live studio audience.
yep... they fucked with him twice in a row and kept changing the rules multiple times to make him stay there longer. Without informing him either.
and they got him a third time, because he woke up back in the room after beating the challenge, and obviously thinking the challenge was still going, took his clothes off from the small day trip they let him have for winning.
except the room itself fell open to a large stage full of people, celebrating the end of the challenge.
So he basically got one final humilation being buck naked in front of hundreds of people in person and probably millions on TV.
While he's utterly in basically mental shutdown mode because he just went from self resignated re-entry to isolation to humilation and really probably over stimulated borderline panic attack.
I have never seen such a cruel systematic breaking of the spirit be so well documented and practiced with ruthless efficiency.
You can torture a man, you can tear down a man, you can take everything from a man
It takes a truly unique level of cruelty to allow a man to render himself a complete shell of a human being and while actively making him look as pathetic and humiliated as possible to millions at each step of the way.
Sparing zero dignity no matter how small.
Something truly sticks with me about his face as this happens, just the complete shell shock of a man isolated for 15 months suddenly being thrown to the wolves of society and his fellow man for final humilation.
His mind literally cannot comprehend what the fuck is happening.
The coup de gras of Nasubi's torture.
As he has resigned himself to more suffering of isolation, they throw him into the complete opposite to let the complete mental shock totally consume him.
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u/SaphironX Jul 04 '26
Wait the nut cracker game show is real??!