On Feb. 14, NHK announced that its regular program, “Buratamori,” would end in April. The official explanation is that Tamori, the show’s star, who is now 78 and reportedly still in good shape, feels the format of the show is too much of a strain, since it requires him to walk around outdoor locations for long periods of time, as the title suggests (bura is a morpheme that means “walking here and there”). The weekly magazine Flash ran an article on Feb. 20 saying that NHK is quite disappointed since the show is popular. It still commands a 10 percent share, which is very good for NHK shows that aren’t the Sunday night historical drama. The public broacaster will replace it with “New Project X: Challengers,” a spin on another old favorite, “Project X,” which celebrated Japanese ingenuity and entrepreneurship, but Flash insists that NHK would prefer Tamori stay, and not just because of the show’s ratings. “Buratamori” is fairly inexpensive to make (Tamori’s own guarantee isn’t revealed, but everyone knows that NHK is pretty cheap when it comes to talent), since it simply places Tamori, a female staff announcer, and that week’s “expert” in a neighborhood, usually in Tokyo, and has them walk around and talk about the sights. Unlike other travel shows of this ilk, what they look at and talk about is the geological/geographical makeup of the neighborhoods, which tend to be off the beaten tourist paths. Tamori loves that kind of stuff and, even more, he loves showing off his knowledge of that kind of stuff, be it secret streams that still run below the pavement or archeologically significant sites that exist in broad daylight. One of the show’s beaten-to-death cliches is the moment or moments when Tamori is asked a question by the expert and he has the answer ready, thus evoking shock and a comment along the lines of, “Wow, you really know a lot!”

Kazuyoshi Morita, better known by his stage name, Tamori, has come one step closer to calling it a career. Tamori used to be one of the most ubiquitous personalities on Japanese television. With his trademark shades, sharp wit, and genuine appetite for intellectual stimulation, he often rose above the basic requirements of a TV host, though unlike the other two male TV personalities who dominated screens over the last 40 years, “Beat” Takeshi Kitano and Sanma Akashiya, he was not a comedian in the strictest sense. He was more of a raconteur who comes across as a libidinous salaryman with an id that’s been set free, but he could talk openly and with considerable authority about everything from American jazz to the natural sciences when the occasion called for it. 

Flash assumes that Tamori’s reasoning for ending the show is bogus. The writer of the article says he saw with his own eyes Tamori walking around Tokyo the day after the announcement in a jaunty mood, as if such actions put the lie to his statement that he was tired of walking around; but, in any case, his decision is hardly surprising. He doesn’t need the work and likely his interest in the show has cooled over time—”Buratamori” became a regular program in 2015 after being an occasional special since 2008. Flash says that, in fact, he wanted to end it earlier, but may have put it off as a favor to former SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, who does the voiceover narration for the show. When SMAP broke up in 2016 and Kusanagi left his agency, Johnny & Associates, “Buratamori” became his only regular TV gig for a while. The two had been close since Kusanagi was a regular on Tamori’s most popular venture, the Fuji TV daytime variety show “Morita Kazuyoshi Hour: Waratte Iitomo!”, which went off the air in 2014. Johnny’s is no longer breathing down Kusanagi’s neck due to the big sexual abuse scandal, and the former idol has recovered fully as an in-demand actor (in fact, he’s one of the stars of NHK’s current morning drama), so he doesn’t need the “Buratamori” job either. After “Waratte” ended and another Tamori perennial, TV Asahi’s late night variety show, “Tamori Club,” called it a day last year, it appears Mr. Morita is winding down his career in anticipation of turning 80. The only regular show he still helms is TV Asahi’s “Music Station,” which will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2026. TV Asahi has indicated it would like for Tamori to stay until then, but he said he wants to be out of the business by next year. 

The announcement of “Buratamori”‘s end occasioned internet chatter, much of it, according to Chunichi Sports, centered on whether or not Tamori’s rhetorical style on the show could be categorized as “mansplaining,” the English neologism denoting the way a man shows off his knowledge to a woman by talking down to her. The argument was sparked by a tweet from Aichi Prefectural University professor Nobutaka Kamei, who said that while he considered “Buratamori” an excellent TV program production-wise, the basic structure of show made him uncomfortable, because it was based on Tamori’s explanations to his younger female assistant, who invariably praised him on his erudition. Though a few commenters seemed to agree with Kamei, most begged to differ, saying that the female announcer, Aoi Noguchi, often provided comments and answers to questions that were every bit as knowledgeable as Tamori’s, and that when the expert for that week’s show happened to be a younger woman, Tamori did not interrupt. Also, when the expert was a man, the expert often was even more condescending than Tamori was purported to be. In response to the pushback on X (formerly Twitter), Kamei himself seemed to resort to mansplaining by trying to over-intellectualize his opinion. A more rigorous rebuttal was offered by Prof. Ken Ogiso of International University, who called Kamei’s rationalization “twisted,” adding that Noguchi’s demeanor toward Tamori was simply that of a younger person to an older person, and that when Tamori talked to anyone on the show, he was always respectful, even when cracking jokes at their expense. 

I agree with Kamei’s critics that Tamori does not explicitly mansplain on “Buratamori,” though I understand where Kamei is coming from. One could make a better argument that Japanese media institutionalized mansplaining a long time ago with its rigid talk-show format of an older male host working alongside a younger female announcer. Always, the host has to explain things to the announcer, who will nod and make sounds that indicate she understands completely what he’s talking about, usually in a context of seeming ignorant prior to being made aware of this information. Though the announcer is meant to be the proxy for the viewing audience, condescension is baked into the exchanges, and while female announcers’ roles on TV have become more varied and enlightened over time, this dynamic still persists to this day. Since Tamori himself often filled the host role on talk shows in the past, he probably partook of his share of mansplaining, though it’s not evident on “Buratamori.”

In addition, Tamori, even more than Takeshi or Sanma, retains a certain lascivious image that could be mistaken for mansplaining. He cultivated this image as one of the hosts of “11 P.M.,” the notorious nightly variety show launched in the 1970s and characterized by casual nudity, mild sexual content, and the kind of self-consciously male-centric view of intellectual inquiry made famous by Playboy magazine. Tamori subsequently streamlined this image with “Tamori Club,” whose bawdy content took a more adolescent approach that embraced all the topics covered in a spirit of appreciation that was infectious, be it about trains (a Tamori obsession), the commoner culinary arts, or language, the latter as exemplified by the most ingenious comic segment in the history of the medium, “Sora Mimi Hour,” which elevated the hyper-literal interpretation of misheard song lyrics to video art that’s simultaneously sublime and ridiculous. Yes, Tamori played up his naughty boy particulars, but the sexism was undermined by a playfulness that no one could take seriously and a comic effectiveness that was instinctual rather than contrived. When Takeshi and Sanma made sex jokes it was always at the expense of women in general and men-who-weren’t-getting-any in particular. Tamori’s ribald banter was lighter and often a comment on the way sex was being handled by the (male) writers of a particular show. He saw the silliness of it and reacted accordingly.

Personally, I have no lasting affection for “Buratamori,” which is a great idea that has been rendered dull by convention and habit. However, I do miss “Tamori Club,” the best TV program ever produced in Japan and one that could never be reproduced because of Tamori. It’s right there in the title.