Generally speaking, Japanese television doesn’t do much for me. Sure, there are a few programs that I find mildly entertaining, but one can only watch so many shows about cooking and/or eating food, silly trivia and mundane, formulaic dramas. However, the one merit that Japanese TV has over, say, American TV, is the possibility of encountering random, sheer draw-dropping absurdity while casually flipping through the channels.

A case in point is something I stumbled upon last Wednesday night: a contest on a comedy variety program called Haneru no Tobira (Hanetobi for short). Basically, the game involves five Japanese comedians in a kaiten-zushi (conveyor-belt sushi) restaurant in Roppongi, an area in Tokyo known for its high concentration of foreign residents. Why Roppongi? Well, according to most Japanese people, it’s a universally-known fact that the Japanese invented chopsticks and people of other nationalities are inherently incapable of mastering their proper usage (resulting in every non-Japanese person being asked “Can you use chopsticks?” at least once per conversation with every single Japanese person they ever meet). Thus, in order to achieve absolute authenticity, the contestants in the game each came costumed to represent members of different foreign nations. Let’s meet them!

THE AMERICAN

Tsukaji Muga as Tsukageorge

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THE INDIAN

Itakura Toshiyuki as Itachai

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THE CHINA GIRL

Abukawa Mihoko as Abuchan

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THE RUSSIAN

Akiyama Ryuji as Akibachof

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THE MEXICAN

Kajiwara Yuta as Kajikaras

Wow, there’s nothing quite like offensive racial caricatures to get things off to a good start, eh?

The game began with all of the contestants taking a seat along the counter in front of the sushi chef, played by fellow comedian Nishino Akihiro, and engaging in witty banter on the sole topic of their foreignness, complete with exaggerated body language and heavily-accented Japanese.

Once the sheer hilarity of the fact that they were dressed as foreigners had died down a little, the game got off to a start. Small plates of sushi and other food items (e.g., a whole raw squid, a slice of honeydew melon, etc.) were sent around on the conveyor belt one-by-one, and the object of the game was for each contestant to use chopsticks to scoop each item up off of the plate and into his/her mouth without dropping it before the plate passed them by.

The only catch that the contestants were required to use their chopsticks in — say it ain’t so! — the proper form (i.e., grasping the top chopstick like a pencil).

One by one, each contestant did their best to pick up each item and put it into their mouths without incident. Those who succeeded were rewarded with the succulent taste of the whichever delicacy they managed to grab.

Those who failed, however, were greeted by unpleasant visitors: two ripped Japanese guys looking to mete out some fierce punishment! (Look familiar?)

Yep, at this particular kaiten-zushi joint, customers who fail to pick up their food from the revolving conveyor belt must face some revolving of their own.

As you can see, inadequate chopstick-handling is not without its consequences.

By the end of the game, whichever contestant managed to escape being spun around at the hands of the Chopstick Etiquette Enforcers was declared the winner. In this particular episode, it was the Chinese girl. Go figure.

Now, while it’s easy to imagine non-Japanese people who happened to view this program getting all up in arms with indignation over the stereotpyical portrayal of foreigners (I know I did at first), one thing worth noting is that the program is actually making fun of Japanese people’s inability to use chopsticks properly. The ironic truth of the matter is that many Japanese themselves people don’t hold their chopsticks “correctly;” most simply continue to use whatever method they found easiest as a child without regard for the proper form. In fact, the topic of how people hold their chopsticks pops up in conversations with surprising regularity here (at least among some of the dull people I work with, who always seem to bring it up after “o-hashi jouzu“-ing me for the gazillionth time in the many years we’ve known each other).

There’s certainly no denying the fact that the Japanese comedians dressing up like ethnic caricatures is nothing short of an old-time minstrel show, but for what it’s worth, it’s not like similar things haven’t been shown on TV in the West. I suppose some issues to consider are the nature of the humor as well as how it is received by the intended audience.

Hanetobi airs Wednesdays at 7:57p.m. on Fuji TV.