Clive James On "Za Gaman"

[Mulboyne]

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Clive James is currently reading excerpts from his memoirs for BBC radio. James had made his names as an essayist and TV critic but, in 1982, made the move to hosting his own show, called Clive James On Television . The programme featured clips of television from around the world and, almost single-handedly, introduced the idea of outrageous Japanese variety shows to a Western audience. In particular, James showed clips from "Endurance", actually a segment called "Za Gaman", which used to be broadcast as part of Fuji TV's "Tuesday Wide Special".

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James describes in his memoirs the discovery of "Za Gaman" and you can hear him talking about it in the BBC audio clip below from just before the two minute mark:

Clive James On "Za Gaman"

(The clip is only available until 9:00am GMT on 26th October)

When James talks about the "Japanese-speaking stringer in Tokyo", I'd lay money that he is referring to Dave Spector because the man himself began to appear on the programme as the Japanese segments became more popular. Spector was also working with Fuji at that time so would have had access to clips from the show. In the early eighties, before the British public had even noticed the effects of the bubble in Japan, almost everyone had heard of "Endurance". This used to cause some confusion for Japanese visitors to London who had never heard the English title and couldn't understand why they were being asked about cockroaches in underpants by everyone they met.

The clips were controversial. James himself mentions the claims of racism where some felt the show was mocking Japanese people. Meanwhile, British ex-POWs were outraged that audiences found examples of Japanese torture funny. Having experienced the real thing at first hand, they felt it was nothing to laugh about. It's perhaps also worth mentioning that the Japanese community was uncomfortable that "Za Gaman" was being taken as representative of Japanese TV. They pointed out that James failed to mention the contestants were all university students engaged in something similar to a British rag week. You can also read the same criticism in the programme's Japanese Wikipedia entry. In fact, for a while, many Japanese I met in Britain would even try to convince me that "Za Gaman" was barely known in Japan - you can still see it sometimes described that way on the web - until they discovered that I already knew it was shown at prime time on a national channel. Today, I'm not sure anyone would bother with the obfuscation. Not only are Japanese variety shows so well-known abroad for their slapstick and humiliation that "I Survived A Japanese Game Show" relies on the knowledge as its premise, overseas shows in recent years have been happy to use the same extreme treatment on their own contestants.

Even at the time, Clive James was clearly uncomfortable with the racism accusations and so he decided to make fun of himself a few years later by appearing on a similar show. He couldn't get on "Za Gaman" but he was welcomed onto the set of "Takeshi's Castle". The clip below is from a programme which followed James around Japan:

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Whatever you make of James' overall approach, his final observation in the clip, "The Japanese approach to television seemed very sensible: spend little, and laugh a lot", was not only accurate in 1987, it is still a major governing principle today.

[Kagetsu]

That last one was fantastic!

[kurohinge1]