Is your TV turning Japanese? With so many game shows imported from Japan and translated for American audiences, you may really think so.
Seven million viewers tuned in to the premiere of Hole in the Wall on Fox last weekend, a respectable amount for a show that is essentially a human version of the video game Tetris (the show was adapted for the United States after the Japanese version became a YouTube hit). And with ABC’s I Survived a Japanese Game Show, the focus of many a watercooler discussion this past summer, television executive eyes are surely looking for that next Iron Chef or Takeshi’s Castle — a Japanese game show that will become an American phenomenon in the time it takes to make ramen.
The Gross National Cool of Japan is soaring; Japanese cultural products, including TV shows, are undoubtedly “in” among American audiences and have been for years.
“There is a buzz around Japan right now,” said Patrick Macias, editor-in-chief of Otaku USA. “There is a market for these Japanese game shows because people at the TV network must know Cool Japan is happening now, especially on the Internet.”
Alvin Lu, vice president of production for VIZ Media, one of the major publishers and distributors of Japanese manga to the English-speaking world, sees that Japanese entertainment is attracting a loyal audience around the world.
“People are seeing an energy and quality in Japanese entertainment they don’t see elsewhere,” Lu said. “The web and global capitalism has somewhat eroded the barriers between different kinds of entertainment in different parts of the world, and for whatever reason, people around the world, not just in America, are gravitating to certain kinds of Japanese entertainment.”
But Cool Japan has been cementing itself in American culture long before the age of digital communication.
“You could say that interest in Japanese culture was very high in the 1980s, when things like anime and manga were being discovered by American audiences for the first time,” said Lu. “You can go back to Lafcadio Hearn in the 19th century,” referring to the Western author who was largely responsible for introducing Japan to the West.
Lisa Katayama, the author of Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, agreed that Japanese pop culture has long been a foundation of certain segments of American society. “If you look at U.S. geek culture, knowledge of anime and manga is an integral part of it,” Katayama said.
And it’s growing. “Manga is huge, taking up huge sections of bookstores,” Katayama said. “Bookstores are going down, with people reading stuff online, but the manga section is growing.”
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Long Bui, an Ethnic Studies doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, suggests that American TV networks are eager to import Japanese game shows because of that culture’s familiarity to Americans.
“Japan is the land of ‘The Orient,’ but America also has an economic symmetry with Japan,” Bui said. “Certain political theorists call it the first Western Asian country.”
Familiarity, however, does not necessarily breed accuracy, and larger stereotypes play into even the silliest of shows. On I Survived A Japanese Game Show, for example, “Americans are real and Japanese are goofy,” said Bui, noting that it runs contrary to the pervasive image of the stoic Japanese. Despite the fact that slapstick is almost universal, Bui adds, Japanese slapstick will always be seen in the larger cultural context, “almost inseparable from ideas of Japanese robotic efficiency, seriousness and racialized ideas of passivity and cruelty.”
Katayama said that show “is really based on the premise that Japanese are so quirky and crazy, that we don’t really understand that culture and we don’t really understand why they’re doing this, so it’s crazy and funny. Personally I feel like it’s kind of making fun of a culture without really understanding it.”
Think Geek
The largest criticism of American portrayals of Japanese culture comes from the web’s geek community. Geek culture on the Internet has a more nuanced understanding of Japanese pop culture and finds the American takes on Japanese programming to be outdated, according to Macias.
“After the show is filtered through the executive level, you end up getting a bad imitation of the real thing,” Macias said. “It’s riding on old bum stereotypes that originated, like Takeshi’s Castle, 20 years ago.”
And there are surely many Japanese shows that are destined to remain on that island — for now, at least. “To make a really successful Japanese variety show, you have to have really crass humor and there’s a lot of slapping involved and there’s a lot of violations of basic rights to privacy,” Katayama said, referring to shows where people are pulled from toilets or shot into the sky from porta-potties. “That would never fly in the U.S.”
Emily– although these Japanese game show remakes in the U.S. are popular, there’s a lot of criticism out there that some of these remakes don’t have that same quality that you can see in the shows produced in Japan. For example, the U.S. version of “Hole in the Wall” is getting a lot of negative reviews for not being in anyway fun or amusing like the Japanese version known as “Brain Wall” (a.k.a. “Human Tetris” on YouTube). The Japanese produced game shows are supposed to be fun, funny, lighthearted, and the contestants love to mess around. The American versions are very competitive, too competitive to the point where it’s just not as amusing as watching the Japanese versions on YouTube.
There is a big factor in Japanese TV that was never covered in this article and that is the fact that, in Japan, there are movie celebrities and TV celebrities. In the game shows and quiz shows in Japan, you almost never see “normal” contestants. They are almost all, universally, TV celebrities. Most of the time they are comedian (or manzai) teams or individual comedians. Some are TV or pop stars. Some are pinup models. But they are all recognizable.
So when you watch the show, of course the contestants will ham it up since it’s their job and it increases their popularity. As a viewer, since you know the contestants, it’s even more entertaining than watching random people. In a way, it’s like how, in American Idol, once you get to know the contestants, it draws in the audience far more than at the beginning.
I think that that will make a very big difference in how the gameshows are received. Iron Chef America has gotten some of this since the chefs are all celebrity chefs and Alton Brown has succeeded in becoming a Food Network celebrity. But, overall, in the US, since this type of celebrities are still few and far between (except on shows like The Gong Show on Comedy Central where the “celebrity judges” are as close as we get) and the ones we have, typically, they don’t have the same exposure as in Japan so the audience doesn’t necessarily connect with them, it may be difficult to really pull off a successful game show.
Ultimately, the concept of a “game show” in the US and in Japan are just different enough that it may be difficult to emulate.
I’ve always thought that the American ‘Wipe Out’ has been the best ‘Japanese game show’ inspired American game show.
They make it their own, have fun contestants and enough variety in the challenges to make each week entertaining.
The posters above (tim and aaron) have also hit the nail on the head with their comments.
Hole In The Wall is not a sport or an athletic competition, it is a test of character. Contestants thrust themselves into an uncaring machine that odds-on will force them into an awkward pratfall in an unflattering costume; they beat the game by surviving with style, not by consistently beating the machine.
The British version of Hole In The Wall (which can be downloaded and viewed from various online sources) is instructive to compare to the American one.
For Britain they seem to coach the audience less; not as much primed cheering and pro-wrestling-style teethgnashing. The contestants are crassly-treated guests, not taunted hazing victims like on Fox.
I expect that the US show’s British(!) producers took detailed show notes from Fox and that these dictated the changes.
Too bad; the British version would get better ratings on Fox than their own version. I’ll take crass and rowdy over sleazy and sadistic any day.
I like watching the original Japanese game shows because they put a lot of focus on the game itself rather than on the over-zealous host or the hired-on contestants that are paid to fake being regular people (“Wipeout” is well known for this).
In Hole in the Wall (US), a lot of the humor is lost, and the pacing of the show is horrible. On-air, Brain Wall iterates through each round quickly, not cutting back on the antics. Here, there are no antics to cut back on, but we have all this loose time that’s just drawing out the show to the 22 minute mark.
Ultimately, the problem arises from cultural implementation. The Japanese variant lives for the situational humor the game creates. The American variant is reformatted to be a cold game show. The personalities also lend to a stark difference, with the Japanese almost constantly in laughter or praise, while the Americans are constantly hooting and hollering.
Ultimately, when things make a transition in imitation, something is bound to be lost from the original. It’s just not the same. One could even say that it is ruined. One could go so far as to blame it on culture. I can’t. It’s simply how people are.
The reason American versions tend to fail quickly is because executives fashion them into carrot and stick competitions featuring gullible nameless chumps. They see the viewer as a means of validation, not feedback. The filtering is meant to be in tune with the wishes of the shareholders or executives, no one else. (Grey’s Anatomy lesbian storyline, anyone?) As with Survivor, it is as though the opinion of the viewer is unimportant, just so long as his / her television is tuned to that program. Given how our Hole in the Wall works, it’s a safe bet you’ll never see Blake Lively or Ashton Kutcher showing up to play any time soon.
They should make Human Tetris into a real video game — NES original of course
Human Tetris is the most awesome game show ever:]. [Of course feel free to debate, I'm just exaggerating.]
I was instantlly amused by the charisma–the energy & all the humor of the show. Not to mention, some of these were just impossible and yet the contestants still made an attempt. My favorite was one where the guy stared at it as if he wasn’t scared and right at the moment before it hit him he throws up his fists and goes “I GIVE UP!” haha. It was very amusing.
And I agree–Human Tetris should become a game
Also, the geek community has almost become annoying in their criticism. Although I agree that the originals are better [I'm an avid anime fan & I watch in sub]–people need to stop complaining about it. If you people think it’s so horrible, grow up and get a job on the networks, and take over the industry or something of the sort! Then you can make quality dubs or just air the shows as you please. I don’t know, I suppose I’m just tired of complaining and waiting for someone to do something about it. Either you grow up and change things, or you learn to accept it that we have cultural differences! Don’t sit there in the middle and continue complaining…
human tetris is awesome lol
The first sentence of the last paragraph reads:
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And there are surely many Japanese shows that are destined to remain on that island — for now, at least.
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…Japan is not one island. You should know these things.
only iron chef america survive with flying colors in america
and now that super stupid knock off silent library in Mtv that they copy from they original skits of “gaki no tsukai are hendanai” the skit is called silent library by the way its way more funny and exaggeration in it it a pure comedy slap stick from the gaki gang
support japanese shows most of them are viewed online and been sub for non japanese speakers