It has none of the flesh and muscle-flexing of Love Island, the tantrums of Big Brother or the hideous challenges of I’m a Celebrity, yet Terrace House has taken Japan by storm.
I t has none of the flesh and muscle-flexing of Love Island, the tantrums of Big Brother or the hideous challenges of I’m a Celebrity, yet Terrace House has taken Japan by storm. Even though not much seems to happen.
For Japanese viewers of reality television, a good degree of the appeal is the calm and respectful way in which the six residents of the house go about their day-to-day lives, the lack of drama — genuine or encouraged by a producer keen to boost the ratings — the politeness and support they extend to each other. These, after all, are traits that many Japanese still pride themselves on.
“People like to watch it because those are the lives they would like to lead and often they see the lives of the residents of the house as extensions of their own”, said Makoto Watanabe, a lecturer in media and communications at Hokkaido Bunkyo University.
“Yes, it goes very slowly as the different people learn about the other people they are living with, their likes and dislikes, and sometimes they fall in love”, he said. “But that is the sort of life that lots of people in Japan want for themselves.
“I’m a fan of the programme myself and you find yourself really identifying with these people and their everyday lives”, he told The Telegraph.
