Horrifying Japanese TV Show Prank

Japanese TV, or at least what we westerners have seen of it, is admittedly quite...bizarre.  People have laughed at the typical Japanese game show where people do the strangest things (even stranger than they would do over here) for money or fame or what have you.  Some of the commercials have to be seen to be believed.  We westerners seem to get a kick out of these shows too.  Just look at the success of Spike TV's MXC, where they take the video from an old Japanese show and put a new (and probably funnier) soundtrack on it.

But sometimes you see something from Japanese TV and you really have to wonder...
Take a look at this video and you'll see something that I can't even imagine being on TV.  Keep in mind that this is a Japanese prank show and people are actually finding this funny (maybe you'll be one of them?).  Watch it before reading the rest of this post.




Now, I'll admit when I first saw this on Fox's Red Eye the other night, my first instinct was to laugh.  It escaped me before I could think about it.  I'm not proud of that.  In hindsight, this is a really sick joke to play on somebody, even worse to do it on national television.  "Hey, Thomas!  I hate to tell you this, but your wife and kids were just killed in a home invasion......Ha!!  I wish you could see the look on your face when I said that.  It was priceless!!!!  You're on Candid Camera!"

For a long time (maybe even before Candid Camera), we've gotten laughs from videotaping people in intentionally uncomfortable situations and then revealing the joke to them.  But there's a key word in there that this show misses.  UNCOMFORTABLE.  Subjects don't FEAR DEATH, they're just UNCOMFORTABLE.

This is a really sick prank, and I'm glad that nothing like this would ever be shown on TV over here (other than as a news/commentary story about it).  Is this funny?  Nothing could be further from the truth.