‘Why was he still naked on TV a year later?’ The Contestant’s lingering questions, answered

polygon.com:

Hulu’s new documentary The Contestantis a lively watch, but also a deeply unnerving one. In 1998,Nasubi (meaning “eggplant,” a personal nickname turned stage name) agreed to live in a tiny one-room apartment, completely isolated from the world, for a segment on Japan’s extreme game show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen. He was allowed no food, clothing, or other personal possessions, except whatever he could win through magazine sweepstakes. Told to stay in the room until he’d won 1 million yen worth of prizes, he slowly starved, naked and alone, with his physical and mental health deteriorating. Then, when he finally reached his goal, the show’s producer, Toshio Tsuchiya, told him he had to do it all again, this time in Korea.

In a real-life spin on The Truman Show, Toshio was secretly filming and broadcasting footage of Nasubi, who earned a worldwide following of 17 million fascinated viewers, all while remaining completely unaware that he was being watched. Director Clair Titley tells his story through archival footage and new interviews, with Nasubi and Toshio both exploring what they remember about this early exercise in reality TV from 25 years ago, before Titley moves on to Nasubi’s attempts to reclaim his life in the years that followed.

Nasubi’s situation became worldwide news back in the late ’90s, but the news stories left a lot of questions behind. The Contestant answers many of them, like “How did Toshio find Nasubi for the show?” and “Why didn’t Nasubi just leave, since his door was never locked?” But the documentary creates some mysteries of its own. Polygon sat down with Titley and Nasubi to ask some of the questions we still wondered about after watching.

Nasubi: I have this characteristic, different face. So I was bullied as a child. But instead of taking my future as a negative thing, I realized I can make it fun, and use this as a weapon, as a tool to make people laugh. And that’s something I learned, to survive. So I wanted to be an actor-comedian who makes