Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
TV show of lone diner sets off feeding frenzy
Japanese viewers can’t get enough
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, families gather to watch the Year-end 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 just before midnight. Some watch the This Is no Task for Kids! variety show where comedians do stupid things and get punished for screwing up.
But this year a show that is for many “salarymen” pure escapism will take on the entertainment programmes. The Solitary Gourmet will broadcast its first New Year’s Eve special, in which the star, the character Goro Inogashira, will travel to Setouchi and eat. All by himself.
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 role model for a swathe of society. He is middle-aged, but free from the round-the-clock obligations of corporate life. He is a selfemployed salesman of soft furnishings 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 specialities.
“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.
The show is made up of lots of long, lingering footage of the menus and the meals. Inogashira sits there, by himself, and savours the food. He’s not looking at his phone; he’s not reading a book – he’s enjoying every mouthful. He never Instagrams his meals.
He’s not self-conscious about being alone in rowdy bars or restaurants. He even enjoys desserts – something associated with being a sissy.
On New Year’s Eve, Inogashira takes his last trip of the year to the Setouchi area, between Hiroshima and Osaka.
Yutaka Matsushige, the actor who plays the solitary gourmet, has a warning for viewers: “If you watch the show at this late hour on New Year’s Eve and get hungry, there won’t be any restaurants open, so don’t get mad at us.” – The Washington Post