The greatest pig mud in Japan coats many people's relationships with the country. And as one of its weirdest exports threatens to return, my own move may be back on the cards, too
This is the first of a semi-regular series documenting our time in Japan. It's predominantly for family and friends, but I hope you enjoy it too.
An actor and DJ from Liverpool extolling a pig farm for its ability to produce TV-friendly mud was one of my earliest memories of Japan.
A slight man in a full business suit, replete with the Ray-Ban Wayfarer eye-glasses I professed were not ironic, had just found the drop from the wall he had just mantled greater than expected. He fell heavily with a plop and Craig Charles explained his fall was broken by Japan’s most luxuriant sludge.
To a ten-year-old slurping squash and waiting for the Simpsons to start, Takeshi’s Castle was mesmerising. Charles tried to corral the mania but was often as confused as the bludgeoned contestants. My Pop told me it was ‘tripe’. I was hooked on the polystyrene castle – and Japan.
There is undoubtedly an undergrad thesis in the resonance of Takeshi’s Castle. A third-year media student could tell you that the blind pursuit of an undisclosed goal was a symptom of late stage capitalism as the ‘bubble’ threatened to burst. They could write how the imperially-clobbered Hayato Tani (dubbed General Lee on UK TV) was a dig at a country pushing for rearmament. They may even tell you this was Kafkaesque broadcasting for the cocaine generation.
Perhaps not.
The show concludes with an all out assault on the eponymous castle. Armed with water pistols, and in later editions laser guns as the LDP warped Article 9, contestants fought to confront Takeshi.
Takeshi is not well known beyond his armaments in the UK, but in Japan he is a household name. Perhaps better known as ‘Beat’ Takeshi, Takeshi Kitano is a comedian, actor and director of some notorious Yakuza movies. He’s also faced accusations of assault, misogyny and abuse.
After Barack Obama expressed his support for gay marriage in 2012, Takeshi said: “Obama supports gay marriage. You would support a marriage to an animal eventually, then." And in 2021, accusations against Takeshi’s close ties to the real-world Yakuza gangs resurfaced after his car was attacked with a pickaxe. Apparently it was a fan.
Against the mud-saturated sets of Takeshi’s Castle, ‘Beat’ looks severe. He haunts the Japanese version of the show, every now and then breaking into uncontrollable laughter at a joke only he gets, and contestants have to wade through mud to get, too.
Even now, the contrast is compelling but as of 2020 Takeshi’s Castle no longer airs in the UK. And in 2020 my own move to visit the land of Craig Charles’ favourite mud was also pulled.
It has been two long years since. 24 months of panic and anguish, of tugging at every Reddit thread to find the story behind the story. We made phone calls, emailed top brass, begged, pleaded, prayed for answers. And in 2022, this very year, Takeshi’s Castle is returning.
How will the show’s first contestants view the inevitable sterilisation that will come from an Amazon reboot in 2023? Will they rub tweaked elbows as they watch the corners of the shin-splintering Skipping Stones filed smooth? Or rue the introduction of even the simplest of safety measures? With many things in Japan, Romanticism for the past may be left wanting.
All this to say, that I hope to get to Japan before passing judgement. I’m due to fly to Tokyo shortly, and then onto Kobe. In the last two years of failing to make the move I’ve started to see the futility of hauling myself through mud to reach a castle that creaks as you climb it. But that has not stopped me donning the Ray-Bans.
Was it a good idea? Ask me next year. And in the words of Craig Charles: “sayonara”.