It’s pure escapism watching hit TV show in Japan about a man who eats alone
TOKYO: Forget big and almost always disappointing parties, and that struggle to get home after midnight. In Japan, New Year’s Eve is all about watching TV at home with your family, a reward after you’ve done your end-of-year deep clean.
Usually, Japanese families gather to watch the “Yearend Song Festival” on NHK, the public broadcaster, where popular singers are divided into teams - red for women, white for men–- and battle it out, with the winner announced shortly before midnight. (More often than not, it’s the men.)
Some families switch channels to watch the “This Is no Task for Kids!” variety show in which comedians do stupid things and get punished for screwing up.
But this year a show that is for many Japanese “salarymen” pure escapism will take on the entertainment shows. The Solitary Gourmet will broadcast its first New Year’s Eve special, in which the star, a character named Goro Inogashira, will travel by himself to the western coastal area of Setouchi and eat. All by himself.
“I think TV Tokyo has given up trying to win audience for this slot,” Yutaka Matsushige, the actor who plays Inogashira, joked about the channel’s decision to broadcast a New Year’s special on a night that, for almost 70 years, has been defined by the red-and-white singing contest on NHK.
The Solitary Gourmet, now in its sixth season, is a uniquely Japanese kind of hit.
This is a country where men are supposed to get jobs in big companies and remain there for life, spending long days in the office and then long nights eating, drinking and sometimes singing karaoke with their superiors. If your boss asks his team to have dinner together, there is no saying “no.” These salarymen barely see their wives and children during the week.
That is why Inogashira has emerged as a kind of role model for a big swath of Japanese society. He is a middle-aged Japanese man, but he is free from the round-the-clock obligations of corporate life. He is a self-employed salesman of soft furnishings imported from Europe.
He doesn’t drink. He’s not obliged to socialise with colleagues. He’s unencumbered by a family.
He just travels the country selling his wares. And when he gets hungry, he stops off at small, no-frills, family-run restaurants and relishes the local specialties. Over six seasons, he has eaten chicken hot pot in Fukuoka and grilled beef tongue in Sendai.
“Salarymen are corporate slaves who work tirelessly for their companies and their families,” said Ushio Yoshida, a TV critic for the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper. “But Inogashira has escaped this slavery. That’s why he’s a hero to many people.”
In food-mad Japan, the show has also helped take some of the stigma out of eating alone.
Inogashira is a fictional character, and the show is scripted – he thinks about what to eat, describes what he is eating and comments on what others are eating – but the restaurants he visits are real.
Before season six began this spring, Matsushige told local reporters that he didn’t understand why people were interested in watching a middleaged man just eating – and eating slowly. Still, he said that it’s the food that’s the star of the show. He’s just a supporting actor. — Washington Post