TOKYO — Be it contestants force-feeding themselves scalding noodle soup or flinging themselves spread-eagle at Velcro walls, Japanese game shows can be outlandish and oddball, often reveling in their slightly sadistic bent.
But several recent accidents, including a copycat death and two on-set spinal injuries, have spurred critics, viewers and police to question whether the wacky ratings ploys have gone too far.
Police began investigating producers at the country's leading commercial network this week for possible negligence after two contestants on its wildly popular "Muscle Ranking" show were seriously injured.
The weekly program, aired by Tokyo Broadcasting System and watched by nearly 15 million people, pits amateurs against celebrities and athletes in offbeat tests of agility and strength. The accidents — both resulting in spinal injuries — occurred during filming of a special obstacle-course episode originally planned for broadcast May 18.
According to TBS spokesman Takahiro Saito, a 19-year-old college student was hospitalized after falling more than six feet into a 4-foot-deep water-filled moat. Another contestant was hospitalized after trying to catch a 100-pound plastic ball, nearly 6 feet in diameter.
TBS canceled the special, and Saito said the network is reviewing the show's "safety policy and content." Neither contestant was wearing a helmet.
"The purpose of the show was to entertain, but if people are getting hurt in its making, the audience can't enjoy it," Saito said.
"Muscle Ranking" isn't the only TBS program taking heat.
Less than two weeks earlier, the company was apologizing for the death of a middle school student in central Japan who choked to death on a bread roll while imitating a "speed eating" game along the lines of TBS's "Food Battle Club."
That show, which has aired three times this year but is now on hold, invited contestants, mostly young men, to race against each other in double-fisting platefuls of sushi, draining glasses of milk or slurping up bowls of steaming ramen noodles. Some visibly hold back a vomit reflex as the cameras zoom in on the food and saliva dribbling down their chins.
After the copycat death, TBS's statement read: "'Food Battle' is a show featuring people with a special talent for eating. Regular people should not imitate it."
Critics have called TBS and competitor TV Tokyo, which aired a similar show earlier this year, irresponsible.
"Japan is very good at developing creative, interesting game shows — the kind people talk about the next day," said Mamoru Sakamoto, editor of the TV monthly Galac. "But I think this has gone too far."
Japan's pioneering game-show style often taps the perverse pleasure of watching sometimes sadistic, but creative, tests of human endurance and humility.
The obstacle-course genre dates back to a late 1980s show, "Takeshi's Castle," in which eager contestants — clad in plastic helmets and knee pads — screamed a hearty "I'll do my best!" before leaping onto swinging vines or wobbling through a field of giant rolling pins. Most ended face down in ubiquitous water traps for slapstick laughs, but there were some serious injuries as well.
Shows like "Food Battle Club" and "Muscle Ranking" turn it up a notch.
The Saturday night, prime-time "Muscle Ranking" show features people off the street as well as Olympic athletes. And university professors sometimes break down a contestant's performance with high-tech, animated computer simulations that analyze the kinetics of, say, spring-boarding over a 10-foot pyramid.
TBS is not alone in pushing its contestants' limits.
Nippon Television Network's "Radio Boy" sometimes takes its antics international, as in one episode that sent contestants to neighboring Asian countries — on a $1,000 budget, with no language training — in a contest to find the best lookalike for a Japanese celebrity. And people in spiked helmets dove to skewer falling apples in one game on Fuji Television's "It's OK to Laugh!"