He didn’t know it, but highlights of all this were being broadcast to millions every Sunday on TV, and he was being constantly watched via a massively popular internet webcam. This was Denpa Shonen-teki Kensho Seikatsu (“Airwave Boy’s Prize Competition Life”), a segment of the frequently cruel comedy show Denpa Shonen (“Airwave Boy”).

The only clothes Nasubi ever won were scanty items of women’s lingerie that didn’t even fit, so he spent the entire time completely naked. If he actually won anything dignified to wear from the thousands of competitions he entered, it seems it was intercepted by the show’s producers. In a rare concession to taste and broadcasting standards, Nasubi’s bare groin was concealed with a garish cartoon eggplant for TV and web broadcasts.

Much of the show’s entertainment value came from his reactions to the prizes he won – from the sublime (winning a big bag of rice, or toilet paper after 10 months without) to the ridiculous (drooling over the TV he had just won before realising, with understandable dismay, that there was nowhere to plug it in).

Nasubi quickly became a cult figure, and attracted massive media attention. Worried that the media had worked out where he was, and that he might find out he was being watched by millions, producers moved him to a new cell in another location. His surprise at waking up with a flashlight in his eyes and being bundled across town was only exceeded by his rage when he realised they had forgotten to bring his bag of rice. His hysterical reaction to this made people think he had really started to crack.

Incredibly, after being released from his prison, Nasubi agreed to repeat the ordeal in Korea, where he wouldn’t even have the benefit of understanding the language:

“I suffered mentally every day. I felt trapped between sanity and madness, and I had no idea that everyone was watching my naked body all this time. It shouldn’t be allowed. But, to be fair, they’ve just given me hot miso soup and a bowl of rice and pickled plums, so I’ve agreed to go to South Korea and repeat the challenge.”

• We miss Denpa Shonen (Watashi to Tokyo)
  “He had to live by getting everything through offers and winning competitions, getting prizes from magazine and newspaper competitions until things he got value more than 1 million yen.”
• Nasubi (Quirky Japan)
  “NTV’s producers have obviously never heard of the Geneva Convention. If they had, they wouldn’t have treated poor Nasubi the way they did.”
• Big in Japan: Nasubi (Metropolis)
  “Nasubi would cavort naked around the tiny apartment with a computer-generated eggplant covering his embarrassment”
• Nasubi’s Homepage (Japanese only)

When a contestant finds someone they like, they must make a public confession of their love. If this is reciprocated, the new couple go back to Japan together. If the lovestruck contestant is turned down, they must return to Japan alone, having humiliated themselves in front of millions.

Forbidden love

It is strictly forbidden to enter Ainori if you’re already in a relationship, and producers to their best to filter out coupled people looking for a free holiday. However, some slip through the net, and more than one contestant has been forced to leave the show when it emerged they had a relationship back in Japan.

The show has also had problems with contestants falling in love with the wrong people. One girl fell for their guide in South Africa (a millionaire playboy), and decided to stay with him when the bus moved on to another country. Another professed a severe crush on the show’s (married) audio technician (who she had never really spoken to), which resulted in both of them being sent home.

Successful matches

All in all, Ainori is an entertaining and effective (albeit expensive) matchmaker. Since the start of the show in 1999, there have been 39 Ainori couples, 7 Ainori marriages and an Ainori baby (as of February 2007).

• Ainori (Wikipedia)
  
• Official site (Japanese)
  
• My Blog: Ainori
  Summaries of each episode in English
  
• An English page dedicated to AINORI
  Screen caps and English description of Ainori episodes from 2004.

The otaku image was dealt a serious blow in 1989, when 26-year-old Tsutomu Miyazaki raped, killed and ate 4 young children. The police found a massive collection of (partly pornographic) anime and manga in his apartment, and the Japanese media went crazy.

In the US, where the pressure to “fit in” is slightly different, the word has been proudly reappropriated by anime enthusiasts.

• Otaku (Wikipedia)
  
• The Politics of Otaku
  (aka: “There’s nothing wrong with being an otaku!”)
  
• ‘I’m alone, but not lonely’
  Japanese Otaku-Kids colonize the Realm of Information and Media
  
• Amateur manga subculture and the otaku panic
  Detailed paper published in the Journal of Japanese Studies (1998)
  
• F*ckin’ Otaku
  

Unlike many goth fashions in the West, GothLoli embraces femininity and grace. It idealizes modest Victorian elegance, and GothLoli girls try to look as much like old-fashioned dolls as possible.

A typical outfit includes a frilly Victorian-style blouse, a voluminous knee-length skirt with lace trimming, long stockings or fishnets, and large, clunky shoes. Clothes are usually limited to black and white, and make-up is used sparingly. To add to the effect, many girls accessorize with lace gloves, parasols, or old-fashioned handbags.

GothLoli is highly influenced by the distinctive style and fashion of Visual-kei music. Mana, the cross-dressing guitar player from the visual-kei group Malice Mizer, is widely-credited with starting the fad.

• Gothic Lolita (Wikipedia)
  
• ‘Elegant Gothic Lolita’
  
• Blue Period – Elegant Gothic Lolita
  

Costumes are often based on popular anime characters, or visual-kei musicians. Usually, this has no sexual focus, but the tight outfits and element of fantasy have made cosplay a significant part of modern Japanese sexuality.

The idea of cosplay was brought to Japan from the US in the 1970s. At an annual Tokyo comic book convention, salesmen dressed up as Kirk and Spock as a gimmick to sell Star Trek magazines.

There are about 50,000 regular cosplayers in Japan. Every weekend, urban Japan sees a bizarre parade of colorful outfits. Tokyo’s Akihabara district has a number of cosplay cafes, where enthusiasts can meet like-minded people, show-off their costumes, and exchange ideas. With waitresses dressed in a variety of provocative outfits, these cafes have created a growing otaku community in the area.

Costumes have always been popular with anime and sci-fi fans in the West, where it’s sometimes referred to as Masquerade. However, the Japanese take it much more seriously, complementing their disguises by throwing themselves deeply into their roles. As long as they look like their hero, their every action, utterance, and thought comes from that character.

While US cosplayers generally only dress up for conventions, Japanese cosplay is a central part of a fan’s private life, filling their spare time and weekends. This dedication is starting to filter into cosplay culture in the US.

Cosplay has a number of subcultures. Cameko (“camera kozo”, or camera boys) are otaku who don’t dress up, but make a hobby of photographing cosplayers. A smaller niche group are “dollers”, who wear masks to fully immerse themselves in role.

• Cosplay.com
  Includes cosplay news, galleries and forums
  
• What is Cosplay?
  Focuses on cosplay in the West
  
• ‘Akihabara becomes geek sex paradise’
  

The difference between manzai and Western double acts is the frenzied pace. The emphasis is less on material (which rarely strays far from the toilet or childish puns), and more on timing and delivery.

The biggest name in manzai is Yoshimoto Kogyo, the Osaka-based entertainment company which produces Japan’s most famous comedians. Thanks to its performers, especially the massively-popular Downtown, the Kansai (Osaka region) dialect has become the language of comedy.

Takeshi “Beat” Kitano used his success in manzai duo ‘The Two Beats’ to launch an international acting/directing career.

• Japan Zone: Yoshimoto Kogyo

This painstaking process included intensive English and Japanese lessons (she’s fluent in both) as well as the usual training in singing and dancing.

At 19, she was one of the most popular artists in Asia, and looked set to start her assault on the US market.

• BoA Nation
  Includes biography, discography, lyrics, gallery and a store
  
• BoA bio and photo gallery
  

Her distinctive look (long auburn hair, thin eyebrows, short skirts and knee high boots) spawned a generation of “Amuraas” (identically-dressed teenage girls).

One-quarter Italian, her husky complexion was an inspiration for the tanned and bleached ganguro girls.

In 1998, she had a son, Haruto, with her second husband. Her first marriage, to a dancer in 1997, was a high-profile disaster.

• Official site
  Japanese only.

Born in New York, she showed talent from an early age and released her first US single (under the name “Cubic U”) before she was 12.

Before she was 20, she married Kazuaki Kiritani, a photographer 15 years her senior, successfully fought life-threatening cancer and sold 6 million records.

With fluent English, incredible tenacity and an impressive set of lungs, she has been one of the only Japanese acts with any hope of denting the US charts.

• Official site
  Japanese only
  
• Utada Online
  
• The international site for Hikki’s admirers
  
• Utada Hikaru (AsiaFinest)
  

Starting in 1988, SMAP (Takuya Kimura, Shingo Katori, Masahiro Nakai, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Goro Inagaki) were lucky enough to be based in a market which never gets tired of bland pop acts, and they’re still going strong.

Their clean-cut image has survived suspicions of sexual abuse by their creator, Johnny Kitagawa, who is rumoured to have raped and exploited young stars.

As well as selling records, they dominate variety shows and dramas to the extent that at least one member seems to be on TV at all times.

The most popular Smapper, Kimura, has forged a successful acting career and frequently tops Asia’s sexiest men lists.

• TV Stars: SMAP (Japan Zone)
  
• SMAP fanlistings