Last week, the National Tax Bureau released its annual list of the country's top tax-payers, and at the summit of the pile of show business personalities was Masahiro Nakai, the self-effacing leader of the boy group SMAP. Nakai's high salary is easy to understand: He appears in at least a half-dozen TV commercials and is the host of three very popular variety shows.
This week, he adds a fourth show to that list, "Wakachuki" (Nippon TV; Sundays, 10:30 p.m.), which is a revival of a show that Nakai and his co-host, veteran announcer Hitoshi Kusano, appeared in several years ago. The new version's title is a kind of contraction of the earlier series' title, which was "Wakarete mo Chuki-na Hito (The Person I Still Love, Though We Broke Up)." The use of the baby word chuki for the more standard suki gives a good indication of the program's tone. The concept is dead simple. Nakai and Kusano interview "unique" couples who either talk about their relationship problems or relate funny, bizarre or salacious details about their love life.
However, the subtext of the new version is apparently the program's main selling point. Throughout their interviews, Nakai and Kusano take on an almost adversarial relationship. Kusano, in effect, is always trying to sell marriage as a sacred and beautiful institution to perennial bachelor Nakai. In publicity interviews for the show Nakai has said that he has "no intention of marrying, or, at least, no intention until I'm, say, 40." (He's now 31.) He also says he "prefers living alone." Nakai, in fact, cultivates this confirmed bachelor image on other programs, especially "Kin-suma," his Friday night variety show where he mostly berates young women for their tastes and habits.