Alone and naked, Tomoaki Hamatsu sat in shock as the walls around him crashed down, revealing 1,000 people staring and laughing. Just minutes before, Hamatsu, commonly known as "Nasubi," had been locked inside a 11-square-meter wooden box.
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02-04, 2025At the time, Hamatsu had no idea what was happening, even fearing he might have been smuggled to North Korea as part of some morbid TV prank. In reality, he had been blindfolded and secretly pushed in front of a studio audience to be publicly humiliated as cameras recorded his every move. The year was 1998, and the grand reveal was the climax of the wildly popular reality TV show, Susume! Denpa Shonen.
For Hamatsu, however, it was the end of 18 months of torment, during which he was mostly exposed, alone, and at the mercy of TV producers who exploited a man desperate for fame. It also shattered his trust in people, a trust he is still working to rebuild 25 years later. “I was pushed to the depths of hell,” he explained.
But instead of letting the anxiety consume him, Hamatsu has turned his hellish experience into a positive force, using comedy and joy to help earthquake victims who have suffered loneliness and isolation. While Hamatsu’s story may seem extreme, coming from the nascent days of reality TV, it remains a cautionary tale about the risks of chasing celebrity and the power of manipulation.
It all started with one word: “Winner.” In Hamatsu’s memory, he had always been mocked for his appearance. He chose the name “Nasubi,” which means eggplant, because of his long face. “I was often bullied because of my long face,” he recalled. “Every time I transferred schools, I would be targeted because of my funny face. But I turned this weakness into strength, using it to make people laugh. The bullying gradually stopped, and I made more friends.”
This passion for making people laugh continued into his 20s, and Hamatsu decided to pursue a career in comedy. He auditioned for the hit TV show Susume! Denpa Shonen, which filmed young comedians doing “crazy, fun” projects, such as walking across Europe and America. Hamatsu didn’t know what to expect but was hoping for a similar experience. He stood with 20 other aspiring comedians, and in a lucky draw, he pulled a card that read “Winner.” His nightmare was about to begin.
“I was blindfolded, given headphones, and put in a car without being told anything,” he said. “Then I was taken to a room, and I was asked to take off all my clothes because they wanted me to start from scratch. So, they took all my clothes. It was at that moment that I first realized I would have to do this project in solitary confinement.”
Hamatsu’s task was both mundane and cruel. Aside from hard biscuits and water, the aspiring comedian needed to win prizes such as food and clothes through magazine sweepstakes. He also received some things he didn’t need, like discount coupons for spicy girl movies and car manufacturing manuals. Every day, the production staff would collect the video tapes and then leave Hamatsu alone again. After two weeks, Hamatsu finally won some jelly to enjoy with his hard biscuits. But his weight loss forced the producers to intervene more often with food.
Hamatsu assumed the best footage would be edited into a funny TV show later. But he struggled to understand how the show he was filming would be popular. As the weeks passed, he doubted his chances of fame, while also feeling profound loneliness. He could have left at any time, and the apartment door wasn’t locked. But he feared doing so would ruin his career. “I felt a kind of silent pressure,” he said. “The person I was talking to was a very famous TV producer, so I thought that for my future in the entertainment industry, it would be better not to go against him. I wanted to make a name for myself at that time.”
It took nearly a year for Hamatsu to win 1 million yen in the sweepstakes, which is about $10,000 in today’s currency, after which he was finally granted a celebratory trip to South Korea. At first, his overseas trip was as he had imagined – going to carnivals and eating some Korean barbecue. But soon after, he was asked to return to another room, again naked.
Hamatsu recalled his surprise at being asked to return to what he was doing before. “When the producer said that line, I was really thinking, ‘What is this person thinking? This person is not human, he’s a demon,’” he said. “This person had no idea how much hardship I had gone through.” Hamatsu’s memory of how he was returned to Japan is hazy. He remembers being blindfolded, wearing noise-canceling headphones, and being driven in a car. He doesn’t remember going through customs or boarding his return flight.
Hamatsu feared he was being sent to North Korea. Instead, he was actually being prepared for the show’s grand finale. Hamatsu was placed in a box measuring just 11 square meters, where he took off his clothes as he had done many times before, and waited. The walls crashed down, and a large studio audience appeared. Hamatsu’s utter confusion, embarrassment, and vulnerability were recorded and broadcast to the world. But he didn’t know this at the time. Hamatsu thought the footage would be edited into a TV show and broadcast later. But in reality, it was being broadcast weekly, creating a social phenomenon he was unaware of. This partially explains why he was so shocked at the grand reveal.
In a documentary about Hamatsu’s experience called The Contestant, the show’s creator and producer, Toshio Tsuchiya, admitted that he told Hamatsu that most of the footage wouldn’t be broadcast. “If there’s a god of television, then I’m the devil,” he said smugly in The Contestant.
By the time Hamatsu finally finished filming, he had been on the show for a staggering 18 months. Susume! Denpa Shonen was a cultural phenomenon, attracting millions of viewers each week. In many ways, Hamatsu’s experience became a real-life Truman Show in Japan. Emerging from isolation, Hamatsu re-entered the world and struggled to adapt. He couldn’t understand why the show was so popular and why he was now a big celebrity. “From about halfway through, the idea of doing something funny as a comedian disappeared. I was just really trying to survive,” Hamatsu explained.
He said the show’s fans were “brainwashed” into thinking he was having fun. “My distrust of people increased,” he said. “Everyone who looked at me was laughing. I felt like they were laughing at me, without knowing how hard it was for me, and that was kind of scary. I felt a fear, a fear of people.”
Over the decades, Hamatsu has tried to put the experience behind him and has built a successful TV and radio career in his home prefecture of Fukushima. He also climbed Mount Everest in 2016, after three failed attempts. But one of his proudest achievements has been supporting earthquake victims. Hamatsu’s home prefecture of Fukushima was devastated in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami disaster, which killed more than 20,000 people and led to the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which is still undergoing a massive cleanup operation.
Last year, Hamatsu volunteered to help after the Noto Peninsula earthquake in western Japan, which killed more than 500 people. He makes sure that those who have lost their homes and livelihoods don’t feel alone and abandoned. “I know better than anyone that people cannot live alone,” he said. “When people are affected by disasters or other calamities, they inevitably feel lonely and helpless. I can’t save everyone, but I see it as my personal mission to help as much as I can.”
In an age of social media and reality TV, Hamatsu understands the allure and the pitfalls of chasing fame. Reality TV contestants around the world have complained about having their lives ruined after being typecast as some sort of villain. In one notorious case in Japan, reality TV star Hana Kimura committed suicide after being portrayed as a villain on a Big Brother-style show and suffering relentless online bullying. “It feels like reality TV shows have become a little too harsh, and they’ve become more extreme, almost like people are laughing at other people’s private matters and misfortunes,” Hamatsu said. “Producers and viewers need to be careful not to go too far and to use their imagination and think about what the person is feeling and going through.”
Hamatsu fully understands why people do crazy things for a shot at fame, but he urges those seeking it to do so with a clear goal and awareness. “If you only chase what the world wants you to do, you’ll end up being a very empty person,” he said. To this day, people still laugh at Hamatsu as the “naked man” from TV. Instead of being consumed by negativity, he has taken a philosophical view of his time on the show and has forgiven those he believes harmed him, including the show’s producers. “I am who I am today thanks to the hardships I went through back then,” he said. “Continuing to hold on to anger and other negative emotions is a burden for me. I am definitely happy.”
So, what are his life goals next? “World peace,” he said, laughing. Hamatsu is trying to put his experiences on Japanese reality TV behind him.
