By Jonathan Soble

Published: November 21 2008 02:00 | Last updated: November 21 2008 02:00

There are two groups of people that westerners who spend time in Japan can broadly be counted on to loathe. The first are the uyoku : rightwing propagandists in black loudspeaker trucks who block traffic to bellow their support for xenophobia and militarism, with nary a glance from the police.

The second are foreigners on television.

Social psychologists would do well to study the visceral reaction that the non-Japanese experience when they spot a gaijin tarento - foreign entertainer - on the tube. The term refers not to Tom Cruise or Beyoncé, but to foreigners who are famous only in Japan - sometimes as singers or comedians but more typically as serial guests on the country's countless quiz and variety shows.

Scan the rows of panellists that populate these programmes - safety in numbers, the booking agents seem to believe - and you're bound to find one, smiling gamely in the back row, offering an occasional quip or insight in (infuriatingly fluent) Japanese.

Is it the apparent tokenism that irks foreign viewers? A secret language envy? Or do they spy their own reflection on the screen, and find the blue-eyed interloper's striving - yet never quite succeeding - to fit in a bit too much to bear?

I had reason to reflect on the gaijin tarento phenomenon recently when I became, in effect, one of them. I had been invited, along with three other foreign journalists, to be a panellist on a programme on TV Tokyo, a network controlled by Japan's main business newspaper, the Nikkei. The show profiles Japanese who have made what the producers deem to be important but under-appreciated contributions to their fields - from inventors to chefs to video game designers.

It is not one of those Japanese shows you see on YouTube - no one is electrocuted for laughs or forced to see how long he can hold his breath in a tank full of lobsters. The riskiest activity imposed on us so far has been to eat some raw oysters that had spent a year in a high-tech deep freeze. (They were yummy, and no one complained of poisoning.)

Still, many of the stock ingredients of Japanese showbiz are there: the garish set, the motley panel of commentators - comedians, a former girl-group pop star, a grumpy, kimono-clad science- fiction writer. The host sports a bright red tuxedo: it is, first and foremost, an entertainment show.

As foreign "experts", our job is to confirm that the work being done by the people profiled is indeed vital to the future of mankind, or at least useful to, say, the global food industry (hence the expertly frozen oysters). It is a role that gaijin have been playing since they first started showing up on television in significant numbers in the 1980s: widening the frame of reference a bit, putting an outsider's stamp of approval on the proceedings.

"Japanese have always been interested in foreign things, plus they've always been interested in how Japan is regarded," says Dave Spector, a Chicago native with wavy blond hair who does the gaijin tarento thing full-time. A former producer for America's ABC network, he has been a staple of Japanese television for a quarter of a century and is one of the few foreign personalities with a background in the medium.

"Almost all the gaijin here had no media experience back home," he says. "They came here as English teachers or something and they were just hanging around . . . [or] chasing after a girl, which happens all the time."

Spector's early contemporaries included ex-Mormon missionaries, aerobics instructors and African diplomats. But things are different today, he says. The internet has usurped the gaijin tarento 's role as a "carrier pigeon" for basic information on foreign food, entertainment and customs, while the sight of outsiders puzzling over Japan's cultural quirks lost its novelty value some years ago.

"There's not much call for a gaijin who's just going to sit there and say 'Nihon wa fushigi desu ne' " (Japan is so mystifying). "I mean, they've already heard that."

Today's foreign celebrities tend to possess skills beyond language ability and unusual pigmentation. Spector has survived as a relentless newshound who ferrets out obscure or untranslated stories and celebrity gossip, which he presents on several shows each week. Younger faces include Patrick Harlan, aka Pakkun, a Harvard-educated comedian, and Jerome White, aka Jero, billed as the first black singer of enka , melodramatic pop music favoured by retirees. Some gaijin tarento are even known outside Japan: Jo Hye-Ryeon, a popular South Korean comedienne and actress, spends half the week at home and the other half taping variety show appearances in Tokyo.

However, parts of the trade remain distinctively retro, notably ugly stereotyping of black people. Bobby Ologun, a Nigerian sometime kickboxer, has built a career with bulging eyes and a mimicked half-wit's voice. "They do play up on the stereotypes," says Spector. "But on the other hand it's also a pay cheque for a lot of people, so they're not complaining."

My invitation by TV Tokyo shows that foreign assessments of Japan remain in demand, though the tone of the commentary has varied over the years. In the 1990s withering criticism was accepted, even encouraged. Koko ga hen da yo, Nihon-jin - literally, "This is what's wrong with you, Japanese people" - was a hit in the economically grim period between 1998 and 2002. It involved a studio full of foreigners griping in the shrillest terms about their chosen country of residence - a masochistic exercise on the part of the producers and audience that would be unimaginable elsewhere.

If our show is anything to go by, the pendulum has swung back to encouraging national pride. Its catchline underscores the lesson that is meant to be learnt from the parade of high-achievers: "Be proud to be Japanese."

This article is part of a series on television round the world.

FT.com

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