Why are there so many “no-good Japanese” these days? asks Shukan Gendai magazine this month.
One thing and another; no single explanation will do. “No-good” seems to mean predatory. The teeth and claws, mostly verbal, cut deep all the same, as the apparent suicide last month of pro wrestler and reality TV actress Hana Kimura reminds us.
“Terrace House,” the Fuji TV show on which Kimura appeared, featured six young people, three men and three women, in somewhat cramped shared accommodations in Tokyo, coping ad lib (the show was supposedly scriptless, although Shukan Shincho magazine last month cast doubt on that) with whatever life threw at them. In a March episode, a male cast member threw Kimura’s prized wrestling costume into the washing machine, where it shrank. Kimura blew a fuse. She held nothing back, giving the housemate whose carelessness or ineptitude caused the damage a lesson he’ll surely never forget in the finer points of domestic laundry.