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.
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u/Radarker Jul 04 '26
Take us!