Kokumin Quiz

In ancient Rome, bread and circus were advocated to satiate the population. Obviously, things haven’t changed the slightest, as can be seen the psychedelic Japan of Kokumin Quiz (“The People’s Quiz”) by Sugimoto Reiichi and Katoh Shinkichi. And faced with a society that is coming undone, nothing like a healthy dose of opium of the masses to lose oneself for a moment in the golden world of the little screen.

There’s no show like Kokumin Quiz — a show for which 95 % of the viewers are religiously staring at their television, drinking every word of K.-i K.-ichi, the hysterical and supercharged anchor with his charming assistante, the delicious M.-da A.-ko. Kokumin Quiz is also about the 500 hopeful candidates going through the screening phase — 100 questions that are as absurd as they are incredibly difficult — and from which will ermerge only a handful of potential winners. And finally, Kokumin Quiz is the possibility of seeing one’s dearest wish come to fruition — be it finding your lost dog, or having the Eiffel Tower in your garden. Everything is possible, thanks to the magic of television — and the strong support of the armed forces of Commander Murakoshi.
Of course, things are less than rosy once you turn off your TV set. Outside, demonstraters are trying the oppose the domination of Kokumin Quiz, without success. The losers of the day will end up like the others in Siberia, to cut up wood and freeze in the cold and die quickly. As for the anchors, once the recording is over, they are brought back to the high security prison where are their accomodation quarters, “for their own security” of course, serving their ten year contract with national television.

During its 900 pages, this saga first published in 1993 is alternatively satyrical, comical or dead serious — without ever parting with its unforgiving cynicism. Running full steam but with commercial breaks, Kokumin Quiz remind Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a dark and desesperate tale under a vaguely humoristical coating.
Not unlike with the former Monty Python member, there is a fascination for deformed faces, with a gallery of hysterical and hideous characters perfectly captured by Katoh Shinkichi’s sprawling line. A style that even transforms architecture, this symbol of power, not leaving untouched the buildings of this nearly contemporary Tokyo, from the show’s moving studio (a kind of robot-building straight from an animated cartoon of the 1930s) to the headquarters of the national television (shaped like a giant snail).

Unique, gigantic and iconoclast, Kokumin Quiz is a welcome stroke of anti-conformism among a Japanese production far too often standardized and respectuous. Deranged and deranging, provocative and right on target, Sugimoto Reiichi and Katoh Shinkichi resolutely go after television, and without pity. Please, do not leave your TV set — “it’s show-time !”