I just finished watching the BBC’s Secret Wilderness. Whilst I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the program this particular episode was about Japan’s nature and wildlife so I made a special effort to watch it. Ok, that’s a lie too, I just happened to catch it.

Overall the program was reasonably good even if it was as guilty as most of the travel programs when it comes to “Wow, look at the Japanese! Look at how crazy the Japanese are!”. That said, presenter Steve Backshall put in a lot more effort than most presenters. No on screen translator was present, and he used some Japanese to converse with the locals. Even his rundown of Japanese food wasn’t the usual “Fish! All they eat is fish!” rubbish that The Discovery Channel seem so desperate to tell us.

According to the BBC;

Steve Backshall discovers Japan’s wilderness, from majestic cranes dancing in subzero temperatures in the North to giant salamanders hanging out near the rice paddies in the South. Along the way, Steve boils an egg by volcano, shares his hot spring with a flock of swans and meets some feisty Macaque monkeys on the beach.

Look at that! A whole paragraph without a reference to underwear vending machines or anime! Although this program is obviously about nature, Backshall’s conversations with locals, despite being in the most basic Japanese, went some way to showing Japanese people as they are, not as TV presenters want them to be.

The very end of the show looked at a tribe of wild Macaque monkeys. Very cute and so forth but right at the end Backshall told a story about how one young female monkey learned how to separate nuts from sand by throwing them into the sea. The rest of the tribe copied and soon all the monkeys could do it - and new monkeys would copy and learn how to do the skill. “This is what we call culture.” Quite a nice way to sum up sociological development, I think.

Hopefully this is the first in a chain of more realistic programs on Japan. No more Super Japan! Wacky Crazy Country! Wooaaah Asia!! nonsense, please.

Update: UK Residents can watch this program on the BBC’s 7 Day iPlayer service. Thanks to Three Legged Cat for the heads up.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 11:14 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.