The TV Dramas of Sakamoto Yuji Part 4 - Someday, When I Recall This Love, I Will Surely Cry

Titles:
Japanese: いつかこの恋を思い出してきっと泣いてしまう or Itsuka Kono Koi wo Omoidashite Kitto Naite Shimau
English: Someday, When I Recall This Love, I Will Surely Cry or Love That Makes You Cry
Broadcast Year: 2016
Subtitled Episodes Available at: Ondramanice
Spoiler-free Synopsis:
This story is a love hexagon that mostly centers on a young woman, Sugihara Oto, who has her purse snatched while visiting Tokyo. A worker at a moving company, Soda Ren, who is a roommate of the guy who stole her purse finds the purse in their apartment and decides to drive to the countryside to return the purse to Oto. Ren helps Oto to flee from an approaching arranged marriage to an older man by driving her back to Tokyo. The two immediately lose touch with each other, and Oto establishes a new life for herself by becoming a healthcare worker at a corporate-run elder care facility. All the pieces of the hexagon are gradually drawn together, and the interweaving plots reach a climax on the day of Tohoku earthquake in 2011. The story then continues after a time gap to a point when the six are brought back together and resolve their relationships.
Crimes and Misdemeanors:
Purse Snatching, Land Swindling, Exploitative Employee Recruitment, Corporate Hostile Takeovers, Elder Care Worker Exploitation
Awards: Best Actor, Theme Song Award
Cast:
The protagonist, Oto, is  played by Arimura Kasumi who has not appeared in any of Sakamoto's other series; however, she immediately followed this role with the prestigious lead in one of last year's asdoras, Hiyokko, which is a delightful tale of a young woman from a rural rice farm who searches for her missing father in 1960's Tokyo. Hiyokko also features both leads from Transit Girls.

Takahata Mitsuki plays another side of the love hexagon, Hinata Kihoko, who is also interested in Ren. She is also part of the ensemble in Mondai No Aru Restaurant where she plays the one character who flips sides moving from accommodating the sexual harassment at the restaurant corporation to joining the other misfits at Bistro Fou.

Mitsushima Hikari plays Oto's single-mother in flashbacks. She, of course, was also the leads in Woman and Soredemo, Ikite Yuku, and one of the members of the quartet in Quartet

Kora Kengo plays the love interest for all three women in the hexagon, Ren. He won the Best Actor award for this performance at the 88th Television Drama Academy Awards.
Beyond Here There Be Spoilers:
The first thing we must consider is the title which touts a melodrama that the series does not quite achieve (and it's probably better for that fact). Yes, there are some frustrating missed connections that the participants might regret in the following years, but other than some trauma from Ren and Oto's families and some implied trauma from the earthquake this series does not really go full weepy. It is a romantic drama in which the central pair are kept apart by various circumstances, and ends when the two finally acknowledge their love for each other and kiss.

The six characters who are interested in each other are mostly fully realized. All three of the women, Sugihara Oto, Hinana Kihoko and Ichimura Konatsu are interested in Ren, Ren and Asahi Ibuki are interested in Oto, and, lastly, Nakajo Haruta is interested in Konatsu.

The central love triangle in the group involves Oto, Ren and Ibuki, and we get to know their characters in some depth. Ren has come to Tokyo to try to make enough money to get back the land that his grandfather lost in a swindle. Oto was placed in the care of some of her relatives as a young girl after her unmarried mother died. The relatives are emotionally abusive and seek to make as much money as they can for themselves via an arranged marriage once she's old enough. Lastly, Ibuki is the younger son of the owner of a large corporation which runs several elder-care facilities including the one where Oto works. He seeks the approval of his father who has had little interest or time for him.

The series seems to have been written from the top down in many respects. Oto and Ren are introduced to each other through Ren's sense of justice in the first episode, and the series ends on their first kiss. The series is exactly (IIRC) divided in half by the earthquake with the narrative time of the first part continuing right up to the evening before the quake, and then, surprisingly, leaping five years at that point where the second part takes up the story in a similar fashion where we slowly uncover what has happened to the characters in the gap.

One of the themes of the series is integrity and justice. Ren's grandfather dies before Ren is able to earn enough to repurchase the land his grandfather had once tilled which causes Ren to lose his sense of justice, and so, after the earthquake he takes on a shady job helping to sign men up to work for some unseen nefarious organization which apparently exploits them. He no longer cares about how he earns his keep, and is only interested in helping his friend Haruta care for Konatsu who is still suffering from PTSD from the events of the quake which we are never shown nor, I believe,  even told about. When Oto seeks him out again she plays an essential role in restoring Ren's integrity.

Meanwhile, Ibuki has been courting Oto to the point that his engagement ring for her literally slips off her finger as he tries to convince her to marry him. His trajectory in the latter half of the series is the opposite of Ren's. He had started as journalist who had written an article exposing issues in the healthcare industry, but when his older brother can no long take being the corporate thug who fires all the workers as his father repeatedly launches hostile corporate take-overs, Ibuki steps into his brother's role to win his father's approval. But Oto discovers that integrity is essential for her in a potential love, and chooses the restored Ren over the fallen Ibuki.

In short, this series is a night-time soap opera with some reasonably interesting twists along the way, but, perhaps, not the grand tragedy suggested by the title. There is a bit of the familial formation that runs throughout Sakamoto's work, but this group is not drawn as close as a whole as his other bands of misfits in his series. Sakamoto's script is successful at getting us to invest in this group of people, but I'm not sure that it achieves as deep of a catharsis as some of his other tragic series.

The TV Dramas of Sakamoto Yuji Part 3 - Woman

Titles:
Japanese: Woman - yes, like Mother, the title of this series was in English even in Japan
English: Woman
Broadcast Year: 2013
Subtitled Episodes Available at: Newasiantv
Spoiler-free Synopsis:
Aoyogi Koharu is happily married with a daughter and another child on the way when her husband, Aoyogi Shin, is killed in an accident at a train station. She works several jobs and struggles to make ends meet. A serious medical condition has her seeking additional governmental support, and with her father dead she is forced to contact her mother, the two having been estranged since her parents divorced twenty years ago. Her little family is slowly reunited, but there is more to the story as she tries to get treatment for her illness and insure some stability for her children.
Crimes and Misdemeanors:
Spousal Abuse, Child Abandonment, Grifting, Manslaughter
Awards: Best Lead Actress
Cast:
The protagonist is Koharu played by Mitsushima Hikari who also is the second lead in Soredemo, Ikite Yuku, one of the members of the quartet in Quartet and has a guest role in Love That makes You Cry.

Koharu's mother is played by Tanaka Yuuko who has similarly important roles in Mother and anone (where she plays the titular role).

Nikaido Fumi plays Koharu's half-sister, Uesugi Shiori. She is also part of the main ensemble in Mondai No Aru Resttaurant where she plays the Todai graduate who has to keep reminding everyone she is a Todai graduate.

Usuda Asami plays Koharu's co-worker and best friend. She also plays the divorcee struggling to keep custody of her son in Mondai No Aru Restaurant, and has a small role in The Great Divorce special.

Takahashi Issei plays Koharu's doctor, and is also one of the members of the quartet in Quartet.

While not appearing in other series by Sakamoto, the actor who plays Koharu's step-father is Kobayashi Kaoru who also plays the diner operator at the center of the anthology series Midnight Diner, the most recent version of which, Tokyo Stories, is available internationally on Netflix.

Finally, one of two really good child actors in these series is Suzuki Rio who plays Koharu's daughter.
Beyond Here There Be Spoilers:
This series is clearly meant to be a follow-up if not a sequel to Mother with a similar set of themes, shared cast, similar look and similar title. There are five mothers in Mother, but Mother might be a better name for this series since one of the themes of the series is the difficulties that working class single mothers face in Japan. Like Mother, it also explores the kinds of hard choices and sacrifices mothers are willing to make for the sake of their children.

Koharu's family after the death of Shin is happy but always on the edge financially, and child care is inconvenient and barely affordable. Further, when Koharu is diagnosed with aplastic anemia affording treatment and even finding the time for treatment proves pretty much impossible. She does have access some governmental support, but as is the case in the US and other countries all family resources must be exhausted first, and when the caseworker contacts Koharu's estranged mother he receives word that she can and will help financially.

In facing her potential death before her children are able to take care of themselves, she swallows her pride and goes to see her mother. Soon she takes her children to live with her mother, step-father and a step-sister she had never met before without telling them about the illness. Her plan seems to be to hope that they all will bond with her children, and, hopefully, take care of them should she die.

Sakamoto has an occasional weakness for plot contrivances, and it's in full force in Woman. As the two families are brought together it is revealed that Koharu's step-sister was fairly directly the cause of Shin's death. She had gotten in with a bunch of grifters who taught her how to accuse men on crowded trains of groping her, and the team would then extract cash from the men to prevent her from going to the police. When Shin appears at her home apparently to try to help Koharu reconcile with her mother, Shiori follows Shin onto a train and, apparently, felt enough jealousy at her previously unknown step-sister to similarly accuse Shin of groping her without her gang around, and a crowd decides to beat up Shin at the next station, and fleeing his attackers (and trying to recover the pears Korahu's mother wanted her to have) his head intersected the next train approaching from the opposite direction. The vigilantes and Shiori fled, and Shin was reported as having died as the result of his being a sex offender.

Now, Sakamoto is clearly feminist throughout these series, but it must be pointed out that this particular plot point is not especially suited to his usual feminist framing. I'm sure such grifting does occur in Japan, but, as is usual in most matters of sexual harassment and rape, false accusations occur orders of magnitude less frequently than actual incidents of sexual harassment and rape. However, the specters of false accusations are constantly raised by the traditional patriarchal power structures to inhibit any kind of progress from being made to mitigate the real problems. Thus, not only is this plot point contrived, it also runs contrary to the otherwise egalitarian themes of the series.

The aplastic anemia is also a contrivance since it is treatable with a marrow transplant and viable matches are hard to find outside of fairly close blood relationships. I guessed who would provide the match, and I am sure you can as well.

A third contrivance puts an undelivered letter from Shin written the day before he died in the hands of Koharu which leads her to his mother who, unfortunately, for everyone is an alcoholic and essentially abandoned Shin when he was twelve in a similar fashion to the plot of the film Nobody Knows.

All that being said, the relationships between the members of Koharu's family are well drawn and well portrayed, and the series is well worth watching despite the contrivances. Korahu's daughter is particularly delightful as she swiftly establishes a relationship with Koharu's step-father and the two work to bring the family together despite the real issues between Koharu and her mother and her step-sister. This show is, unltimately, a hardscrabble tale of reconciliation and healing.

The TV Dramas of Sakamoto Yuji Part 2 - Soredemo, Ikite Yuku

Titles:
Japanese: それでも、生きてゆく. Soredemo, Ikite Yuku
English: "Still, I Will Live" or "Even So, We Will Be Living On"
Broadcast Year: 2011
Subtitled Episodes Available at: Ondramanice
Spoiler-free Synopsis:
Fifteen years ago a 12-year old village boy, Misaki Fumiya, killed the 7-ago sister, Fukami Aki, of his friend, Fukami Hiroki, while Hiroki was supposed to be watching his sister. Both families have been ravaged by the event in the intervening years: the Fukamis by their grief and the Misakis by harassment that has followed them even as they have moved and changed jobs to escape. The killer's younger sister, Toyama Futaba, tries to investigate the harassment and meets Hiroki, and the two then try to find Fumiya who has been released from juvenile detention and given a new identity and a job. The two families are uneasily brought together as they try to make sense of why it happened.
Crimes and Misdemeanors:
Murder, harassment, suicide, assault, attempted murder, attempted suicide
Awards: Best Drama, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Screen Writer
Cast:
The protagonist is Hiroki played by Eita who is also the lead in Sakamoto-sensei's The Great Divorce and the main antagonist in anone. All three roles are strikingly different to the point you might not realize it's the same actor which speaks volumes for his versatility.

The second lead is Futaba played by Mitsushima Hikari who also is the lead in Woman, one of the four members of the quartet in Quartet and has a guest role in Love That makes You Cry. She is certainly a great actress though she shows less range across these roles, though the quirky Suzume in Quartet is quite charming and different from the other two roles.

The antagonist is Fumiya played by Kazama Shunsuke who also has a small role in Mondai No Aru Restaurant.
Beyond Here There Be Spoilers:
One day while I was in grad school, I was taking a shower when Charles urgently knocked on the door of the bathroom saying, "I think Jeanette's brother is here." Charles cleared out of the house, and I dried off, put on my clothes  and went downstairs to find that, indeed, Jeanette's brother was there, but it was her younger brother and not the one who had just murdered his ex-girlfriend on the streets of San Jose a few days before and was being sought by the police.

It did not occur to me as I watched Soredemo, Ikite Yuku (hereafter, SIY) that I had been on the margins of a similar tragedy for a brief period in my life. I certainly did not have any view into the consequences for the victim's family, but it did get to see how the media covered the story here, and I did get to know the consequences for Jeanette's family in the following couple of years.

SIY is probably the darkest of the eight series we will be examining here though it's resolution might be less heart-rending than that of Mother. It is important to note; however, that Sakamoto does not aim for bleakness. Most of the characters come through the narrative of his stories stronger and happier than they were before. There is genuine catharsis in his stories, and so there's always a blend of darkness and light in his work - the comedies are not entirely light as well as we shall see.

In this story, the set up is akin to Romeo and Juliet scaled down to smaller families and no political stakes. Hiroki and Futaba do grow closer through the course of the series, and were their circumstances different their love might have blossomed. In fact, their respective families reach a point that they all would approve. But in the end Futaba chooses to help atone for her brothers actions in a way that would not easily include Hiroki, and Hiroki accepts her decision. Hiroki and Futaba are far more mature than Romeo and Juliet and the attraction between them is far less intense.

You might also expect a redemption arc for the murderer Fumiya who has been working diligently for several years on a farm whose owner believes in rehabilitation and hires men and women released from the penal system. The central tragedy of SIY is that while almost everyone other than the Fukami family believes Fumiya can be redeemed and his relationship to his family and society restored, he does not believe so, and he is almost certainly a psychopath. Hiroki's father is certain Fumiya would kill again, tries to find Fumiya and kill him, and because he is dying of a terminal illness he has nothing to lose. When he fails to find Fumiya before he dies, he presses Hiroki to complete the revenge for the sake Aki and Fumiya's potential future victims. And the Fukami patriarch turns out to be absolutely correct.

Both Futaba and Hiroki actively plan to kill Fumiya in the course of the series as Fumiya's character is revealed, but they both do not want to see the other become a murderer. They hold each other up to a higher standard, and so this series is, indeed, a poignant if not romantic love story. In the moment of crisis Hiroki chooses saving a life over taking one, and while the consequences are, perhaps, harsher for both families it is the one that leads to the greatest growth and hope for all involved.

My brush with murder was a different story. Jeanette's family are highly conservative Christians who were part of a tight-knit, charismatic church community and her brother's victim had been claiming to their fellow church members that he raped her rather than admit they had had a perfectly normal consensual relationship. He killed her after she wrote him a note saying, okay, he did not rape her but with enough sarcasm to put him over the edge. Everyone else in Jeanette's family was, rightly, appalled and apologetic, and Jeanette and her younger brother appeared on the local news in front of our shared house to explain the story and express their grief and condolences to the family of the victim. The murderer was found hiding in a storage unit not far from the crime scene a few days later and he was tried, convicted and went to prison.

And so there were a couple of days there when the house was the focus of a couple of local news shows, and we handled phone calls from local reporters (this was back before everyone had their own phone). I was surprised how compassionate the reporters were. One well-known face, Rigo Chacon, on a San Francisco station called a week after the story had blown over just to check in off the record and ask how her family was doing.

In SIY the press are shown hounding both families fairly relentlessly at least for at time, and that could be because of cultural differences. There are far fewer murders in Japan, and, of course, the story centers on the inexplicable killing of a child. Our culture no longer has the sense of familial culpability that it did prior to the Middle Ages. The earliest Anglo-Saxon laws established weregilds (prices of recompense for murders) to inhibit feuding between clans, and we see similar pressures on the Miakis and Toyamas in SIY to both apologize and make up for the actions of Fumiya even fifteen years later.

A year or two after I completed my PhD., Jeanette introduced me to my wife. I went to her wedding and she came to mine. We're still facebook friends. She would call and visit her brother in prison, and I suppose he was eventually released though we've drifted away over the intervening years and so I never really heard. In any case, while it certainly was a tragedy for both families, I do not think the families were destroyed to the extent that those on SIY were by the event. I think Jeanette's family did change churches but that's a comparably trivial shift, and there was no subsequent harassment that I know of.

Clearly, SIY was a critical if not ratings success. I have not touched on all the family members in this review, but each is fully realized and have their own arc. As a whole this series is probably more of a masterpiece than almost all of subsequent series that I like better, but I am personally less inclined to melodrama.

The TV Dramas of Sakamoto Yuji Part 1 - Introduction

He writes about families. Not necessarily the families we are born into, but the families we make.

He writes about women. His shows typically pass the Bechdel test within the first scene or two.

He writes about people on the margins of Japanese society. Gas station attendants, health care workers, hotel cleaning staff, otaku living in internet cafes.

He writes about crimes. Always with compassion if not approval for the perpetrators.

His name is Sakamoto Yuji and he should be as well known as Hayao Miyazaki or Haruki Murakami here in the West. In the past eight years he has written ten Japanese dramas and won the Television Drama Academy awards for best screenwriter four times during that period. There have been American writers with similar streaks like Aaron Sorkin, David E, Kelly and Rod Serling, but, generally, American shows have much larger writing staffs and Sakamoto-sensei is the solo writer of his screenplays.

His works are being discovered throughout the world, and are being remade in other countries. The earliest show in this period, Mother, has a remake currently running in Korea and the Turkish production was such a hit that they also remade Woman. Restaurant of Problems was also remade in China.

In general, Sakamoto-sensei's series lean towards melodrama. There are terminal illnesses, confrontations, and romances. However, he gravitates towards a more realistic approach to most of these parts of life and usually avoids the tropes of most Western soap operas. Yes, a character goes into a coma, but, no, that character does not return to consciousness at a dramatically convenient moment. The counterfeiters are caught even though they only inadvertently pass a single bill. The character in need of marrow transplant gets a marrow transplant. But, more important, his characters will surprise you with their reactions and revelations. Almost everything is motivated and grounded in the realities of his characters lives.

His writing tends to be a little stagy. Frequently, the pivotal scenes will have two to six characters seated at a table where truths finally are shared. And he loves nothing more than throwing a bunch of misfits together, shaking the box and seeing what comes out. His characters are multidimensional even when by the conventions of society and scripted television they are supposed to be stereotypes.

He revels in details and the minutia of a crafted, living world. He has written the most touching scene you will probably ever see involving grocery receipts. If you watch his shows, you will come to know what a fond is and wonder how it relates to women's rights. You will puzzle at socks never picked up from the hallway, and, yet, all will be revealed. All these things are there for a purpose.

In this series of posts I will examine the series for which English subtitles are available. Two of the series during this period have not been subtitled by fans as far as I can tell: 2010's crime drama Chase and a 2014 comedy set in the Japanese porn industry, Mosaic Japan. I will cover the remaining shows in my highly biased order of least favorite to most, and I will provide some basic content before launching into spoilers, but the vast majority of my analysis will include spoilers.

Terrace House, A Deeper Dive: The Epistemology of Authenticity

How do we know what is real?

More particularly, how do we know what is real on reality TV shows?

In one sense, the question is absurd because the experience of watching TV is nothing like our natural experience of reality. The zen sociologist Bernard McGrane in his book The Un-TV and the 10 MPH Car provides a set of exercises that he assigns to his students that anyone can do to gain some insight to how our brains process TV:

·         Count the technical events (anything you would not normally see or hear standing where the camera would be) for ten minutes.

·         Watch any TV show of your choice for ten minutes without turning the sound on.

·         Watch any news program for ten minutes without turning the sound on.

·         Rather than watch TV, watch someone watch TV for 15 minutes.

·         Watch television for 30 minutes without turning it on.

I found this last exercise particularly enlightening: it's very easy to watch TV for 30 minutes with it on, and it's excruciating to watch it for 30 minutes with it off. Our brains find the motion and sound and the processing of the narratives we are presented extremely satisfying to the point that we do not really need to be invested in a show to enjoy it. Since most of us have grown up with video and film, the skills needed to make sense of it are almost entirely unconscious. We would not want TV to be authentic in that sense. We would not watch a version of Terrace House which was an unedited 24-hour feed of the table camera, for instance.

And so we seek a different kind of authenticity in the shows we watch, and we seek a more particular kind of authenticity in reality TV. We want the people on our reality TV to be autonomous agents living their own lives, making their own decisions and making their own mistakes as if the cameras just happened to be there.

And that, of course, is impossible at least to a certain degree. Cameras often need operators, and camera operators are particularly necessary to get the beautiful, narrow depth of focus shots we enjoy on Terrace House. That means that the places filmed need to staged at least to a certain extent, and the cast has wait for and accommodate that staging. Their interactions cannot always be as natural and spontaneous as they are presented. Once things are set up, the housemates may be able to ignore the cameras and crew, but it's hard to forget they are there, and some housemates never do get used to it. They even talk a bit about this fact with Chie in Boys x Girls Next Door for that extra dose of meta that we've come to love in Terrace House.

But at least they do not have script, right? "No script at all": that's the promise, isn't it?

Lauren talked a bit about her experience in an interview that slipped out briefly onto the internet but was shortly taken down, but, of course, reddit captured the relevant sections for posterity. She's being hyperbolic when she says, "It was non-scripted, but at the same time it was extremely scripted;" however, it is pretty clear that the housemates are prompted by production if not in the moment then in briefings before they start shooting. It's not surprising: reality TV shows have to have some amount of direction, and other shows have been known to use scripts and routinely have cast members recreate interactions which were off camera for whatever reason.

So we cannot even have an entirely unscripted show. Is there a lower bar that a reality TV show which is can be cleared? Can we at least expect the housemates not to lie to us about what they are shown doing on the show? 

Anyone who has watch Boys x Girls In the City to the end knows the answer to that one. Hayato and Riko clearly portrayed their disinterest in each other for the cameras while they were meeting regularly to at least make out. Does the fact that the incident was shown on camera make Terrace House more authentic or less authentic? On the one hand, the production showed what was going on once they learned of it. On the other, it happened, and there's no reason to think that similar things are happening all the time and not getting revealed either because production does not know or does not wish to present it.

And so the epistemology of authenticity for reality TV ultimately comes down to the motivations and actions of the cast. Can we trust that the person being presented is an accurate portrayal of that person even when that portrayal might not be in their own best interest? We see various levels of the ability to inhabit a persona for the screen, and various strategies used to control that persona and what gets revealed. It is easy to identify the worst: Cheri, Wez, and Yuudai. But what if even the vaunted housemates like Han-san, the first Mizuki or Hana were just more successful but equally fake constructs?

It's all a matter of trust. 

We face the same issue in our day-to-day lives. We cannot know another's subjective experience. We cannot be fully certain that people are who they say they are even in our most intimate relationships. All we can do is to see how well people's actions over time align with how they present themselves. And the same thing holds for the people on a reality TV. Only one of the first 21 seasons of the Bachelor resulted in a genuine relationship. On the other hand, if Taishi and Chikako were faking it for the publicity, they seem to be taking the bit further than one might expect. 

We cannot trust reality TV. We cannot know the extent to which events on Terrace House or any similar shows are true to the inner lives and motivations of the cast and how much are driven by producers. The evidence is that Terrace House is relatively authentic. Yes, producers are prompting the housemates at least for the narration they need if not the narratives they have devised. Yes, venues events are staged. Yes, the footage is edited to tell cleaner and clearer story-lines than actually occurred. But I do believe that many of the housemates behave on the show largely in similar ways to the way they behave in the rest of their lives, and that the show is largely an authentic document of at least the parts of their lives which were captured on camera. 

I still trust the show because there has been very little evidence in their lives after the show to contradict the personas which have been presented. There is many a video of Mizuki serving coffee to delighted fans. Eric has his food-truck, and so on. And even Lauren in her unexpurgated interview is behaving pretty much exactly like the Lauren we got to know in the show. We cannot know how real Terrace House is, but the subsequent behavior of the housemates suggests that it's a reasonably faithful presentation of who they were when they were on the show.

Terrace House, A Deeper Dive: A Defense of Cheri

I cannot defend Cheri's actions. That flat, serial-killer affect in the moment of crisis, the inability to take any responsibility for her actions, her expectation that everyone except her else should change to meet her needs, the mean and petty retaliation - all of that is indefensible. I cannot defend what Cheri does on the show, but I can dig into what happened with her on Terrace House, and bring some much-needed balance and perspective to the character of Cheri as we got to know her.

Cheri is triggering for some people. Beauty queen, high school cheerleader who dated the quarterback, valedictorian, smug Cal grad, realtor, social climber, drinker - all of those labels put a big fat target on her to start off with. (Full disclosure:I share two of those categories having spoken at my high school graduation and tied for third in my class, and I smugly graduated from Cal generations before her.) There is a predisposition to believe she is the embodiment of the mean-girl trope even before she opens her mouth just based on her background alone.

And, yet, there is a case to made that her privilege is illusory, or, at least, not the entire story. Remember: she is a brown woman living in America. That, of course, excuses none of the behavior we see from her on the show. But our picture of her is incomplete unless we acknowledge that complexity: even with the privileges that her hard work and successes have brought her, she faces the many of the same struggles that women and POC do in this country. Now, we have to note that the same can be said for all the American women on Aloha State, but in Cheri's case it might be a greater factor in her defensiveness because she has been putting her self out there, succeeding and being rewarded as a representative of cisgendered beauty norms and achievement culture ideals.

Cheri is almost certainly the most hated person who has ever been on Terrace House so far. Individuals will hate other housemates more than Cheri. There are people, for instance. who loath Lauren more than Cheri and others who hate Taishi more than Cheri. And other seasons have had cast members getting a heel-edit like Tap, Makoto, Yuudai, Hayato, Natsumi and Arisa (strangely to me at least- she just seemed kind of meh, but people attack her to this day for rejecting Arman, and having the audacity thereafter to get married and pregnant). But generally these other cast members also have at least few people who will defend them, and the attacks generally die down. 

Not so in Cheri's case. I grabbed the last hundred tweets referencing Cheri from #TerraceHouse (just enter "#TerraceHouse: Cheri" to do this yourself). There were 15 "bitch"s, 6 "slut"s, 5 "worst"s, 5 "annoying"s, 2 "punch"s, 1 "monster" and, of course, 1 "cunt". (To be fair at least 2 of the "bitch"s were positive.) You can also search on Reddit and find threads that might look like they're defending her, but, no, when you enter them, it's largely more vitriol or people wondering where her defenders are.

In order to bring some balance to how we see Cheri let's now turn our attention to the things that she did on the show that bothered people. First, of course, was her hypocrisy in publicly shaming Taishi for being uncommunicative or, at least, unclear to the people he was no longer interested in dating, and then her doing the exact same thing to Eric. Furthermore, in that case, she also lied to the cast by telling the other housemates that he had ghosted her when by his account, at least, she ghosted him. She also gets a little flack for dating at least two people at once though I actually see less slut-shaming than one might expect given how much people dislike her. She also, of course, tells Mariko that Wez hates her which leads to Mariko asking Wez out and the ultimate confrontation at the house meeting. And, finally, there is her participation in the house meeting where she launches the amazingly weak counterattacks that telling Mariko that Wez hated her was the only way to make Mariko stop talking, that it was okay for her to shut herself off from the others in the house because they failed to notice and take care of her when she had a cold, that hurting Mariko would help Mariko become stronger then holding out her future friendships to Wez and Mariko in some sort of passive aggressive maneuver to gain some allies at the table, and confronting Taishi and Chikako afterward for Taishi's yelling at her when there was no sense in which Taishi was yelling at her.

Whew. Did I miss anything?

Here's the thing. 

I suspect we have all known people like Cheri to one degree or another. Cheri is hardly unique in her narcissism. Her dating patterns are perfectly well within American norms for the genetically blessed in their twenties. Her biggest crime is not being the kind of person you would want as friend or a housemate. All the indications are that Cheri comes first in Cheri-land, and, like Taishi, many of us would find her frustrating and galling.

But we don't have to live with her or be her friend. We certainly do not need to threaten to punch her in her face for her transgressions nor even call her names. The online reaction to Cheri, is to my mind,  disproportionate to how she actually behaved, and that means there is something else is going on here.

Part of that disproportion is likely simple misogyny, though I must admit that I lowered my SJW hackles a bit when I saw some of the attacks Yuudai has been getting in his run on OND. There are certainly people in our culture who will pounce when a beautiful woman teeters from the pedestal that has been erected for them. But I no longer think that such reactions are the bulk of triggering that's going on here. 

I think in that most painful moment of the house meeting, anyone who has experienced any degree of emotional abuse sees Cheri's flat affect and counterattacks and feels that she is capable of being an abuser. Am I wrong? Am I misreading what is happening there? I do not think I have the relevant experience and, certainly, I do not have the training in Psychology to make that assessment, but that's my impression. To be clear: I do not think Cheri is an emotionally abusive person, just that in that moment you could see that potential.

We watch Terrace House, in part, because as humans we like to judge other humans. That judgment can be light and mocking and self-reflective, or it can turn dark and reactive and angry. The judgment of Cheri 's character by some people online tends toward the latter. The danger in that darker, more reactive kind of judgment is that it is reductive and can become hyperbolic, and in doing so can perpetuate systems that harm people in general not just the few who choose to appear on a reality TV show. We should not hate Cheri because she a woman nor that she might have the capacity for abuse because most of us have that capacity. 

Criticize the behavior, not the person. 

It is wrong that Cheri consistently placed her needs first without considering how doing so would make the others like Mariko and Eric feel. The behavior of counterattacking rather than trying to understand the way in which what she did hurt her friend: that is wrong too.

I understand Cheri. I have had moments of acting in similar ways to Cheri in my life. But this is the hope: patterns of behavior can be changed, and there is no archetypal, essential Cheri beyond all worth and redemption.

Will she find her ways towards mitigating those behaviors? Many narcissists don't.

But she did reach out Mariko and apologize within a day or two, and I find that fact promising.

Amachan

Sometimes a show is so good that it makes you wistful to find another show that can match it. Mondai no Aru Restaurant was such a show for me. As I casted about looking for something to come close to that experience, I came across the site MyDramaList which covers all Asian dramas, and decided to see if there were any J-dramas focused on the Japanese idol industry. MyDramaList has a convenient search function, and the highest rated j-drama in the music genre is a charming show called Amachan.

Amachan is a 15-minute morning drama that was broadcast 6-days a week over 26 weeks in 2013. Set in a small fishing village, Sanriko, it tells the story of a teenage girl, Amano Aki played by Rena Nounen (who now goes by the highly unsearchable name Non) who accompanies her mother as she returns to village for the first time in 25 years having run away to Tokyo. You'd be hard-pressed to believe that the show is even in part about the idol industry at the beginning because the first 18 or so episodes are about Akichan discovering a love of diving and following in her grandmother's footsteps to become an Ama - a traditional woman diver who harvests sea urchins during the summer months.

Rest assured, however, that this drama does dive into the idol industry, and the middle section of the series moves to Tokyo where Akichan pursues a career as an idol after she forms an idol duo with her best friend Yui from the village. They are implausibly scouted by a guy from an idol organization similar to AKB48's - the actor cast as the head of the organization looks a bit like AKB48's Aki-P and, like Aki-P, writes all the songs for his groups.

But Yuichan never makes it to Tokyo through a series of melodramatic events which mostly detract from the more interesting story-lines about Akichan, her mother and her grandmother. Akichan's mother had run away from home to become an idol in Tokyo in the 80s, but, instead, was convinced by the man who became the head of the idol organization that later recruits Akichan's mother to secretly serve as the singing voice of a young actress who could not sing. The song from that actress's debut film goes to number 1 on the charts but Akichan's mother never receives any credit for it, and the producer never helps her start her own recording career. In Western TV hands this story almost certainly would become a story of vengeance against the producer and the actress, but the story here is much more subtle and complex.

The acting among the leads is superb, and Rena Nounen (Non) is a treasure. Unfortunately, her career since Amachan has been almost completely stalled by a dispute with her talent agency. By comparison the actress who plays Yuichan has been in over a dozen productions since Amachan while Non has done one critically-acclaimed voice-role in an anime during the same period. She is trying to launch a music career as well and you can check out a music video she released a month ago here.

The acting among the supporting cast is much more uneven with a trio of men in the village being played horribly broadly for comic relief including Sugmoto Tetta who was wonderfully restrained and menacing as the main villain in Mondai no Aru Restaurant. I'm guessing that they were directed to be OTT to keep the tone of show relatively light. Japanese audiences would have known going in that the setting and period of the show would cover the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that resulted in the meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and so maintaining that tone would be difficult as the village of Sanriko faces the consequences of the tsunami.

The 156 episode length of the series may seem daunting, but each episode is bite-sized and the pacing is nevertheless pretty compelling. It's really only roughly four times the length of Mondai no Aru Restaurant. I do recommend the show if you're looking for a charming drama about the idol industry in Japan.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: The Boy Prince Slot

The youngest male on the panel is the only position which has changed since the last four panelists were introduced at the end of episode 26 of B&GND. In this entry, I will discuss the guys who have filled that role in the order that they appeared.

Hiroomi Tosaka (b. March 12, 1987) is actually one of the biggest names to appear on the panel. He is a singer in a popular boy-band the Sandaime J Soul Brothers (the third J Soul Brothers). Their last four albums have gone to number 1 in Japan, and they topped this year's list of concert attendance with 1.8 million tickets sold to their 37 shows this year. By comparison the most successful idol group this year, Nogizaka46, sold 488,000 tickets for 38 shows. His run lasted throughout B&GND.

Mochizuki Ayumu (b. September 28, 2000) is the actor who was given the nickname "Boy Prince" by the Rose Buddies podcast (now called the Wonderful! podcast). He has had good start to his career as a child actor having been in five features and five j-dramas in the past two years. We almost certainly heard from him the least of all the panelists

Kentaro (b. June 30, 1997) replaced Mochizuki Ayumu somewhere around episode 25 of B&GITC and lasted through the entirety of AS. He is also an actor, but his career is a bit further along. His first leading role in a feature film is in Demekin which was just released. Like his predecessor we rarely heard from him unless explicitly prompted by Yama Chan.

Shono Hayama (b. December 19, 1995) will be taking the boy prince slot in OND. He is yet another actor with an even more extensive filmography than the prior two though, as far as I can tell he has not yet had a lead in a film (but he's also two years older than Kentaro).

Omichan is five years older than Torichan, and so he was a bit more apt to speak out than the other members in the boy prince slot. I believe that the move to a younger panelist was an expression of the production's desire for an even wider audience demographic. The casting of the panel as audience surrogates makes it clear that the production sees their show as being for all ages interested in real romance (which might exclude tweens and younger, but then again...).

But being the youngest member of the panel is a harder role to fill in Japanese culture in particular. Torichan has the advantage on the show of having been the second panelist, and so the newer members do defer to her a bit, but there's no such advantage for the youngest guy now. His best chance to get a word in is after all the rest have had their say, and that can be particularly hard when Tokui and You begin riffing. And so, while I'm sure Shono Hayama will be personable, I have little expectation that he will shake up to role all that much when OND begins next week.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Babachan

Azusa Babazono (b. March 1, 1981) is, other than the youngest boy prince, the hardest member of the panel to get to know outside of Japan. She, like Yamachan, is a manzai comedian, and her comedy partner is Miho Sumida. Collectively, the duo is known as "Asian", and they had their most successful year in the M-1 comedy competition as Yamachan's did coming in 8th compared to Nankai Candies' 2nd in 2004. From what I can tell, her partner has gotten married and mostly retired from performing.

Babachan, on the other hand, has developed a steady career as a character actress. She's appeared in a few j-drama's every year since 2013.

Her most recent role is in Kono yo ni tayasui shigoto wa nai (watchable at that link with English subtitles) which was broadcast earlier this year. She appears in the first two episodes in the second largest role as a copy writer and announcer for a small city bus company who begins to show the young woman protagonist how to change her reality through the power of ... advertising. Babachan's performance in the show is sunny and magical, and it's well worth checking out those two episodes.

Her role on Terrace House is largely as a fashion goddess, and we, unfortunately, do not get hear from her as frequently as the other panelists. She is even more self-deprecating than Yamachan, She calls herself out for being ugly when, clearly, she's not. She may not match the ridiculous standards for cis-gendered women in the entertainment industry of our times, but she's pretty, she has amazing sense of style and an easy charisma that she can turn on like a klieg light. Her insights about what's happening between the housemates are well worth paying attention to.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Yamachan

Yamasato Ryota (b. April, 14 1977) is kind of analogous to Chris Hardwick: he's primarily a stand-up comedian who has built a career out of being a host. He hosts game shows, talk shows, radio shows and award shows. He has leveraged his image as a nerd into gigs where he gets to interact with the people involved in his fandoms. His focus appears to be more into entertainment in general rather than the things we normally associate with Japanese otaku. He does not appear to be huge fan of manga, or anime, for instance.

Like most comedians in Japan he is part of a comedy duo or manzai. His partner is Yamasaki Shizuyo who has had a successful career as an actress, but who also made a credible attempt to make the Japanese Olympic team as a boxer in the last couple of Olympics. Collectively, Yamasoto and Yamasaki are known as Nankai Candies (apparently through the usual process of a series of puns which can get far more complex in Japanese as different sounds of associated with written characters get substituted). They broke onto the entertainment scene in 2004 by placing second in an important comedy competition.

Yamachan's career has brought him, unsurprisingly, in contact with many other people and threads related to Terrace House. Here, for instance, is Yamachan as a CGI Pharaoh mummifying Torichan ("Yama" means "mountain" in Japanese, and so if Torichan is our little bird on the panel, Yamachan is our little mountain) on a game show before they joined the Terrace House panel:

Yamachan also had ties to AKB48 (which I discussed in the entry on Tokyo Idols) having served as the referee for three of their Janken competitions. (Yes, in addition to their annual popularity elections, AKB48 also more occasionally determines who will get to be on a single by a single elimination rock-paper-scissors tournament.) The last time he refereed the tournament was before Rie joined AKB48, however, and so they would not have met then.

More than anyone else on the panel, Yamachan is a fan of Terrace House. For B&GITC he produced a video after-show for the Netflix YouTube channel with his thoughts on each episode. He also tweets more about the show than anyone else on the panel, but, then, he tweets a lot in general.

His role in the panel is often as a foil: he is likably comfortable with taking positions contrary to everyone else in the group, and cheerfully accepts their mocking and condemnation. He does appear to express more traditional attitudes towards dating than certainly You and Tokui. He sides with the idea that a couple should not kiss or hold hands before they have stated that they like each other, for instance. And he expresses his ire with a light and humorous touch when dating etiquette is violated. He genuinely seems to care about the show and the people on it, and is more than anyone else the surrogate on the panel for obsessive Terrace House fans even though his expressed opinions might differ from such fans.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Tokui

Yoshimi Tokui (b. April 16, 1975) is the oldest man on the panel and is almost exactly two years older than Yamachan. As such, he is probably the most frequent commentator though he certainly defers to You who is more in charge of the hosting and generally guides the conversation. He is charming and handsome, but also the earthiest of the panelists.

He is primarily an actor having had roles in a couple of dozen J-dramas and a few films. Like most tarento, he routinely appears on variety shows as well. It's generally hard to find anything he has been in other than Terrace House which has been subtitled in English. I have found exactly one such J-drama which has been fan-subbed: N No Tame Ni. He plays the role of a man who was murdered in his Tokyo apartment along with his wife. I watched the first 8 minutes or so of the series, but the show mostly focuses on the young people who committed the crime and what led to their doing so. I have no idea when Tokui's character makes an appearance, but its clear that his role in this drama is pretty secondary at best.

As you dive into Terrace House, though, you will quickly uncover the things that he is infamous for: Handjob Karaoke, Pero Pero House and condom ads. Everyone's initial impression of the first of those is that he hosted one of those wacky ongoing Japanese game shows that, in this case, involves men trying to complete a karaoke song before cumming while being given a hand-job. In fact, however, there have only been two episodes of the show and both were a part of the same show that resulted in Pero Pero House. The real story is that Tokui has been hosting a series of specials on an adult satellite network since March, 2013 a month before he first appeared on Terrace House. Google translate puts the name of the show as "Keeping the Chuck of Tokui Yoshimi Down" though I have seen it translated as "Unzipped". There have been seven episodes so far with the most recent in October of 2016. The Pero Pero House sketches were on the 3rd, 4th and 5th episodes and the Handjob Karaoke episodes were on the 6th and 7th.

Pero Pero House is a softcore parody of Terrace House, and it says a lot about Terrace House that the production is perfectly fine with Tokui repeatedly making fun of the incredible length of time it takes for housemates to hook up on the show. The continued presence of Tokui on the panel as a voice of sex-positivity is a strong indication of the show's implicit critique of Japanese dating culture. The show really does seem to wish dating were easier in Japan.

Of course, the downside of Tokui's openness and good cheer is that he does occasionally veer into the objectification of women as does the show in general. Tokui's reaction to Chikako is the clearest example: he almost instantly states at her first appearance that she must be great in bed, and the scenes of her eating a banana are utter catnip to him.

Tokui is our favorite somewhat skeevy and disreputable uncle on the panel. He is given to flights of improvised fan-fiction that never come true. He presents the view-point that consensual sex is a generally a good thing, and he never slut-shames and in fact constantly battles Yamachan's impulses to do so.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Torichan

Continuing our examination of the panelists we turn the second panelist who appeared on the 14th episode of B&GND:

Reina Triendl (b. Jan. 23, 1992).

First of all, how do we get from her Austrian name to "Torichan"? Japanese often uses one of its two syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, to write foreign words. Her last name is written トリンドル in katakana. Each of the symbols represents a vowel or a single consonant followed by a vowel sound (with the sole exception of ンand its equivalent in hiragana which represent an "N" sound with no following vowel). Thus, トリンドル would be pronounced To - Ri - N - Do - Ru or "Torindoru" which gets shortened to "Tori" which, coincidentally and appropriately means "bird" in Japanese. The -chan suffix is a more informal and friendly honorific and is, perhaps, slightly diminutive. Torichan is our little bird on the panel.

(TANGENT. It was not until the announcement of the upcoming series, Terrace House: Opening New Doors that I realized the strange feature of the show's names in Japanese: they are all written and pronounced as English words. Episode 1 opens (nearly three years before the show would seek an international audience via its affiliation with NetFlix) with the name of the show displayed as "Terrace House Boys X Girls Next Door" with テラスハウス in green below that. This latter became the franchise name:テラスハウス. which is pronounced Te - Ra - Su - Ha - U - Su - "Terrace House". The first NetFlix series was also only written in English, "Terrace House Boys X Girls In The City", but, otherwise. used the franchise name. The most recent series is written テラスハウス アロハ ステート that is, Te - Ra - Su - Ha - U - Su - A - Ro - Ha - Su - Te - (e) - To. And the next series is テラスハウス オープニング ニュー　ドアーズ or Te - Ra - Su - Ha - U - Su - O - (o) - Pu - Ni - N - Ngu - Ni - Yu- (u) - Do - A - (a) - Zu or "Terrace House Opening New Doors".)

Torichan was the youngest member of the panel in B&GND, but she has, nevertheless, already had a flourishing career as a model and an actress in TV dramas and film. In fact, she plays the protagonist in a film available right now on US NetFlix called Tag.

Unlike, YOU's film Nobody Knows, I do recommend watching Tag. It is a horror film, but it is not torture porn and the violence is ridiculously over-the-top and cartoonish. If (spoiler from the first few minutes of the film) seeing two busses of school girls get sliced in half by a mysterious wind decapitating everyone except Torichan's character (who was reaching for something on the floor at the time) or occasional panty-shots or the lack of a full explanation for what is happening are deal breakers for you, do not watch this film. Otherwise, it's an enjoyable, evocative film with some striking moments of utter beauty. Torichan does play the protagonist, but the main character changes actresses, character and location a few times. Her character does begin and end the film, and she has the screen-presence and charisma to anchor your interest in the narrative.

Torichan is a superb addition to Terrace House. As we see from the few episodes where she is absent. she tempers the bawdier elements in the panel (generally, Tokui and YOU). She does not speak as often as others on the panel - part of that may be cultural since younger members in a group will often be expected to be silent unless their opinion is solicited. Fortunately, YOU does often ask what Torichan thinks of various moments in the show, and Torichan responses are generally sweet, romantic, sometimes surprisingly lusty, and frequently insightful. She's my favorite member of the panel.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: YOU

Panels are a common part of Japanese variety shows. Usually, they are there to provide comic commentary via inset reaction shots in one corner of the screen. Terrace House's panel does so as well, but instead of insets the show hard cuts to their reactions, and the reaction segments are comparatively long. Thus, in addition to quips we get largely empathetic analysis, discussion and occasional fan-fiction. The panel is clearly designed to be an audience surrogate, and you can tell from the demographics of the panelists that the intention of the show is to have as wide an audience as possible.

And so who are these panelists? They are generally "tarento", Japanese entertainers who serve as hosts and fodder for a endless array of game shows and variety shows. They may have had moments of fame in their prior careers, but, mostly, they are now "famous for being famous". In this series of articles, I'll take a look at the panelists, and examine where they came from and some interesting tidbits from there prior careers.

YOU (born August 29, 1964) is the original and sole host of B&GND. The show's first thirteen episodes had her introducing the show usually from the interior of a product placed car at night as she went from one part of her glamorous life to another. Her original name was Ehara Yukiko, and, thus, her personal name was often shortened to "Yu", but, at some point, her stage name became "YOU" in the English alphabet which is quite striking when it appears in Japanese credits.

She came to fame as the lead singer of a pop/New Wave band called Fairchild. Their music is largely 80s pop dance music with synths which is strange because their live performances were a standard rock quartet with no keyboards at all. Many of their videos can be found on YouTube. Fairchild only lasted from 1988 to 1993.

After that she moved into a general tarento career which included acting in dozens of television dramas and feature films. She received some notice for her feature film debut: 2004's Nobody Knows. As of the posting of this entry, you can watch the movie with English subtitles here, but I strongly advise against your doing so. The film is well regarded: Roger Ebert gave it 4.5 stars out of 5. However, I found it unrelentingly dire. YOU plays the single mother of four children all by different fathers who is trying to find a way for her family to exist in Tokyo, and (spoiler) she only appears in the first maybe 30 minutes of this 2hr 20min film. Her performance is good, but it's a haunting film chock full of despair.

As the anchor of the Terrace House panel, YOU represents an older female demographic, but she easily exudes a rocker-chick vibe that completely undercuts her age. She remains along with Tokui and Yama the most active of the panelists frequently launching into bits with her partner in crime Tokui, but also tossing to Torichan and rebuking Yamachan. She is a treasure.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: The Unbranded

Clearly, many of the housemates on Terrace House are on the show to promote themselves as a brand in their chosen profession. I suspect that the production company could easily fill the house entirely with performing artists and models, and in many ways it would be advantageous to the show to do so: it creates synergies with large talent and modeling agencies, allows access for the show and housemates to attend larger events, and leverages the promotional power of these other groups to promote Terrace House. That being the case, it is remarkable that the show has since day one on B&GND generally always included housemates for whom being on the show will do nothing in particular to promote their chosen career. Consistent with the other hidden agendas within the production, the show seems interested in exploring the idea that a wide variety of people can live together in harmony, and that everyone can add value to each other's lives when there is a forum to get to know each other as individuals.

Japanese culture is unusually homogeneous and there are societal pressures to conform which are unimaginable in the US. For instance, last month a student sued her prefecture after being repeatedly required by her schools to dye her naturally brown hair black under a policy that is meant to deter students from dying their hair. Terrace House presents an opposite ideal to Japan's more traditional values around conformity: people with widely varying backgrounds, aspirations and looks can all live together, help each other and even find romance.

In fact, the show goes out of its way to source housemates outside of the agencies which provide the models, actors, performing artists and professional sportspeople which have been the majority of the cast. Mizuki, for instance, reports that she was scouted for the show. Arman had done some production work on other shows, and was approached through those connections. And the show has also has accepted online applications for anyone who might be interested in joining the cast although it is unclear to me if anyone on the show was cast from those applications.

Of course, the distinction between which housemates are there to promote their personal brand and those who have no such agenda is a bit blurry and can change. It is hard to see how being on Terrace House can particularly help a realtor, an architect or someone who wants to launch a coffee shop. I'm sure Eric appreciates the fans who seek out The Punchbowl, but their patronage alone cannot sustain his business. On the other hand, Tecchan from B&GND came to the show legitimately training to be a fireman, but then used his presence on the show to create a successful personal brand.

The danger of including only people who are there to enhance their personal brand is that it can lead to inauthentic interactions and even outright deception. In US reality shows the casting for hyperbolic personalities creates an ecosystem of famewhores who see it as a route to become that perverse idea of someone who is famous for being famous. Terrace House cuts through that miasma by casting people who have genuine talents and by largely screening out the overly dramatic.

However, this approach is not perfect. Wez is clearly only on the show to present DOPE favorably on camera, and Cheri has issues that would seem perfectly normal on US reality TV. However, the other unbranded members of the cast like Anna and Chikako ground the show and create resistance against the imperative of the others to protect their brand by only presenting themselves in a favorable light.

Terrace House's formula of including people with no personal brand has generally been successful at avoiding some of the insidious tropes of Western reality TV. By doing so, it presents a vision of inclusiveness as alternative to the traditional conformity of Japanese. The show supports the ideal that people can find and love each other because of their variety and not despite their differences.

Terrace House, A Deeper Dive: Tokyo Idols and Casting

Tokyo Idols is a documentary on the idol industry in Japan and was released on NetFlix last month. It is not directly related to Terrace House, but, nevertheless, it served to change my mind on one aspect of how the casting is done on Terrace House. Prior to watching this film I felt that the show should not have cast people in the idol industry like Rie (B&GND) and Rikopin (B&GITC) because these women are contractually obligated not to have a boyfriend, and being on Terrace house often put them in the untenable position of having to choose between forming a romantic relationship and their job.After watching the film, however, I believe that Terrace House's approach to relationship formation is far more healthy and appropriate for Japanese culture, and is a strong counter to the highly problematic aspects of the idol industry as a whole.

I do recommend watching Tokyo Idols. It provides an excellent, and, I believe, a fairly balanced view of how the idol industry exploits both the idols and their fans. It should be said, however, that otaku who follow idols do not agree that the film is balanced because it does not feature any women fans, and over emphasizes the presence and impact of sketchier older men in the fandom and their relationship to these young women. That being said, you do not need to watch the film to understand idol culture as it is currently structured in Japan, but, instead, you need only learn about the history of AKB48 (the group that Rie was in during B&GND).

Idol culture as it exists now is the result of a couple of promotional innovations that, as far as I can tell, arose with AKB48. The group started in 2005 as a primarily live act with its own theater space in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. The marketing genius and lyricist behind all of the the group's singles is Yasushi Akimoto,who came up with the ideas that if you bought a CD single you would get two things in addition to the music: a chance to shake the hand of a girl in the group and starting in 2009 a chance to vote for which of the girls would be featured in one of the singles in an annual election called the senbatsu sōsenkyo.

The handshake events were so successful that they became a ubiquitous feature of the idol industry, and the film does an excellent job of exploring what these events mean to the fans. Essentially, men (mostly) are given a chance to hold the hands of these pretty, young women for a few seconds and establish a connection which can be renewed at subsequent events. The film argues that these events have become so successful that they are, in part, responsible for Japan's lower birth rate. I find that thesis overblown; however, the film does provide evidence that there are a set of men who find easier to have these interactions than to try to get to know the real women in their lives as people and form relationships with them.

It is important to understand just how big the idol industry in Japan has become. The film mentions that there are around 10,000 young women who call themselves idols. The larger AKB48 organization alone has about 800 girls from various sister bands throughout Japan and Asia who can take part in the annual elections.

And those elections are a big deal in Japan. Here's a look at Google search for "American Idol" and "election" in the US:



As you can see, at it's peak American Idol was about as popular as US congressional elections during non-presidential campaign years. Here's a similar graph showing the popularity for the word "election" in Japan along with the Japanese for the more AKB48-specific term senbatsu sōsenkyo:



Those smaller peaks between the spikes are the national parliamentary elections. That is, by this measure the AKB48 elections drive about six times as much interest online as their national governmental elections.

Part of the problem in idol culture is the "love ban": idols who are popular enough to be in group with a management team are routinely required to sign a contract forbids them from having boyfriend or even giving the appearance that they might have had sex with anyone. It is generally believed that these clauses would be legally unenforceable, but they have not, as far as I can tell, ever been tested. Nevertheless, there have been many "scandals" in the idol industry in which these young women have been discovered giving such an appearance and some of them have been forced to leave the industry early as a consequence. In fact, the biggest news from the most recent AKB48 elections was an idol announcing she would be getting married as a way to get out in  front of such a "scandal". She will, of course, be leaving the group as a consequence.

Idol culture brings many people together to focus attention and money on the idealized presentation of a relatively few young women. It is exploitative both of the young women themselves and of the lives and livelihoods of at least some of its fans. It has created many-to-one versions of relationships which foster and sustain a mere patina of what a real relationship can and should be between two human beings.

Terrace House, whatever other faults it may have, is all about how two people get to know each other as equal individuals, and the show celebrates those genuine individual connections as they form. If idol culture in Japan is a kind of poison, then Terrace House is a kind of antidote to that poison. And so, thanks to Tokyo Idols I am now completely in favor of including idols in the cast.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Mila

Mila set the record for the shortest stay on Terrace House at six weeks. She was, nevertheless, one of the more likable housemates, and so we wonder why we got to see so little of her while she was around and why she left so soon.

The biggest problem behind her lack of screen-time was, of course, Taishi's transformation of the show into a version of The Bachelor centered squarely on him, and he, surprisingly, did not manage to ask Mila out in the 257 seconds between her arrival and that of Chikako. Mila was almost instantly made irrelevant to Taishi's arc, and was, similarly, sidelined when Cheri went to meet Eric.

Mila is interested in fashion (you can check out her vlog here which is still active) and fashion design, in particular, but we never got to see it other than her breezy, beachy personal style. Those of us who watch Project Runway know that there was been some interest by young designers in exploring the possibilities in neoprene, and she says on screen a couple of times that that's what she wants to do. But, unlike Uchi, she did not drag a sewing machine to the house, and so we never got to see her constructing a garment. And, unsurprisingly, Guy never did seem to follow through by connecting her to the wet-suit makers that he knew. And so, Mila, was largely relegated to the role of witness in most of her on-screen interactions, and she was good at that role providing some humor and pleasant interactions. But, you know, the panel already provides an audience surrogate, and so it's tough to add to that role as a housemate.

As for why she left, we can only speculate. As others have noted, she was the youngest in the house and the only one in the house at the time who could not drink which excluded her from going to Wez' gig. Yuya faced a similar few weeks when he was the only non-drinker, but he and Avian were already on their path towards their relationship by that point. Hikaru on B&GITC also came into the house as the only one too young to drink at the time, and he lasted a bit longer.

There may have been some indirect pressure from the production as well in her decision. I doubt anyone took her aside and suggested she should leave. But I do imagine that the producers do update the cast about any NetFlix extensions and what the currently anticipated ending date is for the show. I can also imagine that at some point they say to the cast that this is the last chance for you to leave because the show will be ending in, say, eight weeks, and we'll expect you to stick it out from this point onward if you stay. And I can easily imagine such an announcement resulting in the call we see Mila make announcing her exit.

It also must be said that from everything I have seen, being on reality TV can be hard in unexpected ways. There is often a camera crew around, and placing mics and replacing their batteries becomes a routine invasion of your personal space. Most shows forbid turning off your mic during the day, and so you must somehow accept that all your bathroom noises are getting recorded. It could simply be the case that Mila never got comfortable with the routine production processes of the show.

As for the romantic possibilities within the cast for Mila, her options were also pretty limited. She lost her four-minute window with Taishi when Chikako arrived immediately after she did. Guy is certainly warm and attractive, but I can easy imagine that it was impossible to compete with the ghost of Niki so soon after she left. And Wez was circling Anna, or leading whatever life he was having outside the show. And in the end she may not have felt it was worth sticking around to meet whoever would replace Guy.

Terrace House almost certainly would have been better with more Mila. She was sunny, witty and charming. I suspect she would have stuck around longer were the show set in Japan where it would be comparatively easy to continue with her vocational aspirations and check in with friends and family. It is our loss that we did not get to see more of her on the show.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Makoto and the Failure of Jock Prvilege

Let he who has never squandered an opportunity throw the first stone. I know I have, and so I hope to approach the topic of Makoto's run on the show with sympathy and kindness. It is easy to be triggered by some of the people on the show and what we see them do. Most of us were not jocks and cheerleaders in high school, and the show pulls from that pool relatively frequently. American society showers praise and privilege on its athletic heroes to the point that at their most successful levels they can be placed above the law. And, yet, Makoto's story is much more typical of student athletes. The vast majority of athletes who aspire to reach professional levels in their sport will not make it, and the system of privilege that supports can utterly fail them as they exit the path.

Makoto's arc on Terrace House is the opposite of what we usually see on the show. The show casts some people with a talent of some kind, and the usual arc for those housemates is that we hear about the talent when they first appear, and and some point thereafter they have some pivotal event scheduled, all the housemates go, and everyone including the audience are blown away by what this person can do. As far as we can tell, Makoto never gets to pitch at a game in his final year in college, and, in the end, he leaves the house with no clear idea of what he will do next in his life.

The show implicitly and consistently frames a value around vocational aspirations which is shared between Japanese and US culture. We know that not everyone can succeed in their current career path, and so a value is placed upon the performative display of effort. We'd have more sympathy for Makoto if we could see him working out and doing physical therapy to address his injuries. But, instead, we just see him around the house usually eating something that is not particularly healthy. We want to root for him, but we can't if do not perceive that he is even trying.

But maybe he was trying his best, and the show would not or could not show him doing so (perhaps because they could not get the appropriate filming permissions and releases). It's certainly the case that he did not feel that he could ask Minori out while his school's baseball season was still happening. And that pressure led him to the regrettable shoe incident. The desire to prioritize his baseball team was there, if not the drive or ability to succeed.

Societal privilege is an unhealthy thing not only for those who are excluded from that privilege, but also for those it leads on. What of the college athletes who earn a degree, but because of their privilege on campus, do not learn the thinking skills and subject matter knowledge that can result in jobs after their sports careers come to an end? Makoto's arc on the show is sad, and he disappeared from social media thereafter. When we were introduced to him, he was considered charming and handsome. All three girls put him at the top. We can critique his attempts at manipulation, but in the end, I suspect, that Makoto was not the man he could be, and I suspect that a part of that lack of formation was rooted in the negative aspects of jock privilege. I wish him well, and I hope he eventually finds his way.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Ten Things You Will Not See On Terrace House

One occasionally useful approach to defining and understanding something is too consider what it is not. In Orthodox Christian theology it is comparatively common to approach a definition of God by investigating what God is not. This approach is called apophatic or negative theology. In this analysis we consider what Terrace House is not in order to get a clearer view of what it is.

More specifically we will look at what does not occur in the course of the episodes, and in particular the kinds of things that we would expect to occur based on our experience of similar reality TV shows and in our own lives. Let me be clear at this point: the fact that these things do not exist in the Terrace House universe as presented to us is almost always a good thing. The show would be markedly worse in almost every case if these things were brought up on screen.

And so here are ten things you will not see on Terrace House:

1. Abrasive Reality TV Tropes Many of us are attracted to Terrace House because it does not contain a lot of things we are used to seeing on reality TV. No hair-pulling cat-fights, or testosterone-fueled fist fights. No saying, "I'm not here to make friends". And, as far as we can tell, no producer-instigated drama at all (though we always fear that the producers might be staging some of these events). Almost every positive article about Terrace House mentions the absence of these things, and comments on how supposedly boring the resulting show becomes before concluding how addictive and refreshing the show is.
2. Confessionals and Cast-Interacting Hosts There is a simple reason why confessionals and hosts shepherding the cast are ubiquitous on reality TV: creating a narrative is much much easier when you have a narrator. The panel on Terrace House does fill this role to a certain extent, but they like us are limited to what the producers show us, and the producers are limited almost entirely to what the housemates say to each other on camera. I am guessing that prior to their coming on the show that the producers make it clear to each housemate where the fixed camera set-ups are in the house (dining table, living room, rec room and both bedrooms) and that no story will make it on screen unless they talk about it. And so they are encouraged to gather in those spots regularly to talk about what is happening particularly around any dates which are planned or have happened.
3. Housemates Discussing the Panel The show can get pretty meta since the housemates can and do watch the show while their on the show. If you get a chance to watch the original B&GND, you will learn that in the earliest episodes the turn-around time was mind-boggling short. There is at least one instance of several housemates being shown watching the show and seeing what was said in the previous week(!). But while the show exists in the universe of the housemates, and even the reactions to what is happening on the show in social media is (rarely) discussed, the housemates never acknowledge or discuss what is said by the panel. In the universe of the housemates, the panel does not exist.
4. Politics And I'm sure we're all thankful for that fact.The house exists in world with neither Japanese nor any other political discourse. Furthermore, no housemate engages in any kind of political activism on any side of any issue. IIRC, The Real World went there early on, but I do not know how much that became a continuing feature of the lives of the cast-mates as they appeared on the show.
5. Housemates Discussing Popular Culture We know that they occasionally watch One Piece, and various movies in and out of the house. But you never see them discussing popular culture or sports unless it directly relates to their jobs and aspirations.  Interestingly, the panel is much freer in that regard and they often contextualize what is happening within the house in terms of other shows and, occasionally, pop-songs. The panel serves a collective psychopomp escorting the spirit of what happens in the highly circumscribed reality of the housemates as they are presented into a much wider world of culture and experience.
6. Casual Friends Dropping by the House This fact is perhaps the furthest deviation from a more normal existence. Terrace House is not Big Brother: housemates go out into the world and can even voluntarily leave the show. But Terrace House is, nevertheless, isolated. It's a big deal when a family member or former Terrace House personality crosses that doorway and enters the space. No one on Terrace House ever has a friend come over or even pick them up for an activity.
7. House Parties There is, in fact, one such party early on in B&GND, but for the most part the housemates are never shown using these multi-million dollar homes to host a party. There may be pools at the B&GITC and AS houses, but you'll never see anyone outside the house in them. It would not be hard to have PAs at the door getting releases as people come in and licensed music playlists or aspiring bands given a song on-screen. Other shows can and do feature larger social events in their living spaces, but not here on Terrace House. The housemates are required to be monks and nuns of romantic possibilities or, at least, vocational goals and must focus their devotions thereon whilst on the show apparently.
8. Casual Text Oh, there's always the chalk-board for notifications and allocating chores. And Makoto does smoke and brood over his phone in that one scene. And there are occasional notes and goodbye letters. And, of course, a "coward" written on an omelet, as you do. But, by and large, the communication between the housemates never occurs via the written word or by texting. The producers almost certainly want and need things verbalized, and so there are no screen-shots even when there are texts essential to the narrative. Instead, a housemate must say what happened out loud or it does not happen in the context of the show.
9. Panel Insets As far as I can tell, commentators are relatively common on Japanese and other Asian TV, but they are frequently shown as insets commenting and reacting simultaneously with the action on the screen. This technique is more commonly used for comedic commentary and certainly draws focus away from the main screen. It is shocking in B&GND when You and Tori are inset during the introduction of the newer panelists, but it's understandable: the panel is the comedic universe and the house is the dramatic universe of the show.
10. Household Product Placement There are the cars, of course. But this show is not brought to you by green tea Kit Kats or Zojirushi rice cookers. The show gleefully leverages and endorses celebrities, bands, magazines and restaurants, but it is not a show which pushes consumer wares. The focus is on what the housemates can do with their lives and not on what they buy. They are certainly interested in fashion and style, but they are interested in way that excludes the blaring advertisement of pedestrian consumerism.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Beyond Heteronormitivity

So far on Terrace House there have been no openly LGB housemates (I'm setting aside trans issues for the purposes of this discussion). We do know that Makoto has appeared in a gay sex video, but we do not know how he self-identifies. As of the conclusion of Aloha State, there have been 55 cast members on the 180 episodes of the show. The Real World had 252 cast members across its 32 seasons and 33 of those were LGB though a few of those came out after their appearance.

Terrace House seems to be progressive compared to traditional Japanese social values; nevertheless, since an important part of the show is the potential for romance between the housemates, I initially suspected that the show would never be interested in casting any openly LGB housemates. However, Terrace House's production company made the first broadcast live-action drama centered on a lesbian relationship on Japanese TV: Transit Girls. In fact, the director of that series was the director of the Terrace House feature film. Thus, it would seem that the producers are aware of LGB issues and what on-screen representations can mean for that community. And so I'm going to take a look here at what having LGB housemates might mean for the show's potential romance story-lines, and the answer is that it would probably not have much effect one way or another.

This discussion will be a little mathy, but the numbers are pretty simple. With three men and three woman there are nine possible MW pairings (3 men x 3 women). You might initially think that having an entire cast of bisexuals would explode the number of possible pairings, but, in fact, that highly unlikely scenario would not even double the number of possible pairings. Among that number of men and woman there are only three possible MM pairings and three possible WW pairings, and so the total number of pairings in a fully bisexual cast is fifteen.

In fact, if you include cast-mates who are exclusively same-sex oriented, the number of possible pairings gets reduced in general because there are only two other members of the same sex in contrast to three of the other sex. Thus, having one gay or lesbian house mate would reduce the number of potential matches within the house from nine to six since that person would have no one to date within the house.

These numbers are not an argument against LGB representation on the show. Terrace House has functioned perfectly well when the number of potential relationships has been reduced. The original run of the show started with one male housemate who had a girlfriend outside the show and a female idol who could not have a relationship, and so while Tetsuya did try to go out with Rie there were really only four viable potential pairings at the start of show.

I'd like to see LGB representation on the show, but I do not think that doing so would have much effect on the in-house romance story-lines. I do encourage anyone who is interested in these issues to check out Transit Girls which is available with English subtitles at kissasian.ch. That show will give you lots of warm-fuzzies if you support the idea of LGB representation and inclusion and would like to see a Terrace House-like version of it.

Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: Taishi and the Death of Courtly Love

Taishi came to Terrace House with a wooden sword and a heraldic motto: "Shinuhodo No Koi". There's ample evidence that he sees himself in his arc through Aloha State as being on a quest to find a romantic ideal: a love worth dying for. He transforms the show to be the setting for his quest, and the show is willing to follow because it's all about the points of view that housemates have about romance. However, Taishi's idea of love is a one-sided corruption of an ideal of courtly love which is patriarchal and ill-suited to a meeting of equals to begin with.

The ideal of a knight and his lady in the West arose as reaction to severe restrictions on marriage particularly among the nobility of Europe. Marriages were arranged and purely transactions intended to increase the status and power of families and clans. Of course, extra-marital affairs flourished, and were policed by society and the Church. But alongside those traditional family values the troubadours began to sing of a revolutionary new kind of love: one that required no physical consummation and acknowledged an individual agency for both men and women that had been previously forbidden by the culture.

The romantic love of the troubadours was one of selfless service of a knight to his lady. Through the formal process of winning a lady's heart both the knight and lady were able exert choice and control of their emotional lives that they were not available in their familial lives. The knight would perform deeds of valor to win tokens and boons of affection from a women with whom he could not otherwise interact. As a result, even in the romances of that period the emotional interactions were over-examined and overblown.

Taishi is not seeking that kind of love, really, though he might see himself as doing so. Note well that he seeks to find that love worth dying for instead being or becoming a love worth dying for. He is looking outside himself for a transformation that has to occur within himself. Robert Bly (in his book Iron John) calls the ideal that Taishi seeks "the golden-haired one" - it is a projection of the ideal feminine attributes within the man onto the perceived persona of another. There is nothing inherently wrong with that projection: it's a stage of development that almost all men must go through as they learn to have mature relationships with the real human woman in their lives (and, of course, most women go through a similar process in their relationships to men).

And so Taishi's approach is a corruption of courtly love in that he does not sacrifice his interests for the sake of a lady. Instead, he tests each woman to see how well his projections fit his ideals, and when they do not he moves on to the next woman. He often creates wonderful romantic settings for the tests, but it's ultimately never about that warm, living human being (even Anna!) he's taking out. Instead, it's all about whether he can fall for this person with only the barest acknowledgement that they might want to fall for him or that it might matter if they do (Laruen and again Anna).

Courtly love is, ultimately patriarchal. In the world of courtly love, men get to act and women get to react. It is not a meeting of equals opening outward to greater complexity and nestling inward to greater intimacy as equals. Taishi seeks to perfect the way he acts (holding doors and seating his dates) so that his dates might react in ways that match the feminine ideals that are inside himself. I'm not saying that his objectification of the women he takes out would prevent him from getting to know them as people, but it certainly would make doing so much more difficult.