The Contestant, which is coming to Hulu tomorrow, is easily the wildest documentary of 2024. Directed by British filmmaker Clair Titley, The Contestant recounts the story of Tomoaki “Nasubi” Hamatsu, who, in 1998, became the star of a Japanese reality series that stripped him down naked and starved him on national television. Twenty-six years later, he’s now able to reflect on the inhumane way he was treated, as well as the shockingly low amount he was paid: less than $1000 USD, he told Decider in a recent interview.
The reality series was called Denpa Shōnen: A Life in Prizes, and the premise featured Nasubi—a childhood nickname that translates to”eggplant”— trapped in a small studio apartment, with no food or clothing. He had a rack of magazines, and a stack of postcards, and was instructed to enter as many sweepstake contests as he could, to see if man could “live on prizes alone.” Though he had water, food and clothing had to be won. (At first, Nasubi says in the doc, he was given a small amount of crackers to stay alive, but once he began to win food, the crackers stopped coming.) If he won a million yen worth of prizes—or about $7,575 U.S. dollars, using the exchange rate from 1998—he was told he would win the game.
Though he had the option to quit, Nasubi ultimately stuck out the starvation and isolation for 15 months. He knew he was being filmed, but he’d been told by Denpa Shōnen producer Toshio Tsuchiya that the footage would likely never air. In reality, the wildly popular show was airing while Nasubi was still stuck in the room. His naked, censored, and visibly emaciated body was being broadcast to upwards of 15 million viewers. Without his knowledge or consent, he became a media sensation.
In a recent interview with Decider, Nasubi, who is just under six feet tall, said his weight dropped to a low of around 40 kilos, or about 90 pounds, while filming Denpa Shōnen. In the documentary, he speaks of frequently feeling suicidal during that time. Lack of social interaction, fresh air, and proper nutrition brought him to a dark place, to say the least. So was he ever compensated by the show, for enduring such physical and mental torment?
Was Nasubi paid for Denpa Shonen: A Life in Prizes?
In an interview with Decider, Nasubi said he was paid around 100,000 yen total for his 15 months on A Life in Prizes. Using today’s exchange rate, that translates to about $644 U.S. dollars. Using 1998’s exchange rate, it’s closer to $763 U.S. dollars, without adjusting for inflation. With adjusting for inflation, it’s roughly around $1500, in 2024 dollars. But no matter how you slice it, it’s a criminally low amount for over a year of work at a normal job, much less one that involves physical and mental agony.
“I didn’t do this to gain money,” Nasubi told Decider, in an in-person interview conducted via a translator. “Have I gotten a reasonable amount that I deserve? No, probably not to your standard. I haven’t received that. The sum amount of money that I have received was way more than an amount than a college kid could earn in a year. At that time, that was massive. But looking back, did I get enough? That, I’m not sure.”
In that same interview, Nasubi said it never even occurred to him to sue Tsuchiya, or anyone else involved in Denpa Shōnen, until many years later, when foreign journalists began asking him about it. “At that time, it wasn’t really an option that I felt like was there. The was nobody who taught me, ‘Oh, that was a human rights violation. You should sue,’” Nasubi said. “There was nobody who actually came up to me and told me that. Japanese media at that time—that was just the way it was.”
It was only later, he said, that “when foreign press started asking questions, in that regard. That kind of woke me up. ‘Oh, that’s how I should look at it.’ I was told many times, ‘If you sue, you can win. You should speak out against this.’” But Nasubi said he wasn’t interested in suing for the sole sake of gaining money. “To me, just to gain money—that wasn’t it for me.”
Though Nasubi says he never fell sick while filming the series, he does say a doctor told him he was malnourished after the show concluded. In that same interview, The Contestant director Clair Titley added, though the film doesn’t go into it, “when Nasubi came out, he found it quite uncomfortable just wearing clothes. He felt like everybody was watching him. He didn’t know what was real, and what wasn’t real.”
Though he does not completely forgive Tsuchiya—who is also featured in the documentary—for what was done to him, Nasubi said he doesn’t expect anything more in terms of compensation.
“It’s not give and take, in my view,” he said. “By giving something to somebody, maybe as a result, you get something back. But I don’t really have a sense of expecting people to give me something.”
The Contestant will begin streaming on Hulu on Thursday, May 2.
