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Hana Kimura’s Death Sparks De bate on Japanese Reality Show
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Hana Kimura’s Death Sparks Debate on Japanese Reality Show A Suspected Suicide. Cyberbullying. Why Some Call This Netflix Reality Show ‘Toxic’
by Aida Ylanan
As fans continue to mourn the death of -22yearold Hana Kimura, the shy but bubbly professional wrestler who appeared in the latest season of Netflix’s popular reality show “Terrace House,” one persistent theme has accompanied the wave of tributes. “We have to get rid of this belief that you can just say anything you want to so-called famous people,” wrote friend and fellow housemate Emika Mizukoshi in an Instagram tribute to Kimura, whose death was confirmed last week by Stardom Wrestling.
The official cause has not been determined, though troubling social media posts from Kimura in the lead-up to her death have stirred speculation that she took her own life in the face of cyberbullying. Outcry followed against the abuse often directed against the
Hana Kimura (-1997 2020) looks on during the press conference Bushiroad and Stardom on October 2019 ,17 in Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese professional wrestler passed away on May 2020 ,23 and is suspected to have taken her own life. (Photo by Etsuo Hara/Getty Images)
famous, and “so-called famous,” online. (Japanese distributor and Netflix’s co-producer on the series, Fuji TV, announced the cancellation of Kimura’s season on Wednesday. Filming had already stopped because of the COVID19- pandemic.)
Though such harassment finds expression in countless forms and on countless platforms, Kimura’s untimely death has drawn attention to the particular difficulties facing reality TV stars, social media influencers and others of “in-between” celebrity status. Figures like these may be exposed to far more scrutiny — or abuse — than the average person, without the protective layers of the traditional celebrity entourage.
It’s not a phenomenon unique to “Terrace House,” the Japanese reality show that’s obtained a global cult following since being acquired by Netflix in 2015. Each season, the show follows the lives of six strangers — three men, three women — as they live together under the same roof. Deep friendships and budding romances bloom as housemates learn more about one another.
But the “Terrace House” cast — unlike that of the “Big Brother” reality franchise, for instance — often draws on those, like Kimura, who bring with them a following that predates their time on the show. Though not everyone who enters the house is already semi-famous, aspiring models, talented musicians and dedicated athletes have all been among the cast, and the series offers a tangible shot at greater fame and its material benefits.
In fact, the series’ thorny relationship with celebrity is one of its central features: While “Terrace House” was a boon to professional snowboarder Takayuki Nakamura, whose clothing brand received international attention after he wore it on the show, basketball player Ryo Tawatari found himself in hot water when fans theorized he cut short an in-house romance to placate his admirers.
Unfortunately, the abuse that may accompany a star’s rise to prominence is often treated as par for the
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course — the trade you make in return for notoriety. “Terrace House” alumni began sharing their own experiences with the phenomenon after Kimura’s death. “I was often told ‘that’s the price of being on television,’ ‘if you’re going to get hurt, don’t be on it,’ ‘die,’ ‘leave,’” Mizukoshi wrote.
That price is a lot to ask, even of someone who’s signed away their privacy for the sake of our enjoyment.
“I’m just an athlete, not an entertainer,” Tawatari wrote in his online tribute to Kimura. For those who enter the house with even less experience in the public eye, the transition may be even more difficult.
Try as they might to be themselves, it’s all but impossible for housemates to do so truthfully on the show — a rich irony given that “Terrace House,” with slice-of-life scenes that stand in contrast to the more obviously manufactured drama of reality series the “Real Housewives” franchise, has been hailed as one of the most “realistic” entries in the genre.
On “Terrace House” as on any unscripted program, editors sort through hours and hours of footage — most of which we never see — to select intimate moments or heated arguments that will help them build a narrative or shape our understanding of each
“character” on the show — even if the problem gets ironed out in level-headed discussions by housemates afterward. And there’s little they can do once they’ve been transformed into that episode’s hero or antagonist.
“Terrace House” ups the ante by featuring running commentary from panellists — TV personalities and other established celebrities — who pick apart the housemates’ actions and offer opinions that shape the dramatic arc of the show. Sometimes playful and genuinely funny, their comments can come with a mean streak as they poke fun or scorn an unfortunate blunder.
Critics of the show have pointed out the panellists possess biases of their own. When one female housemate was forced into a kiss by her male roommate last season, only one of the six panellists
The death of -22yearold Hana Kimura, a Japanese pro wrestler starring in the newest season of the Netflix reality show «Terrace House,» is swiftly morphing into a narrative about the possible perils of cyberbullying. (Fuji Television/ East Entertainment/ Netflix/TNS)
suggested she had looked uncomfortable — before hesitantly retracting her original observation. The rest had more to say about the female housemate’s looks, with one calling the inscrutable gaze that followed the troubling moment a display of her “womanly side.”
Indeed, some close observers have complained that “Terrace House” has become more sensational over its eight-year run: As one Redditor wrote of the latest season: “I need to watch something positive just to detox from (‘Terrace House’s’) severe toxicity.” Disagreements and love triangles seem to receive more airtime than scenes focused on personal development, and the series has also attracted scrutiny for the growing number of dates that display an alarming absence of consent. Of course, no one can — or should — assign blame for the tragedy that fans and showrunners alike are now facing. Increasingly clear, however, is that at least some “Terrace House” participants feel their casting on the series requires a trade-off between material reward and mental well-being — an impossible calculation to expect anyone to make. Leading a life of intensely scrutinized semi-performance can exhaust the most media-savvy of stars, much less the “so-called famous.”
As Kimura’s death and subsequent remarks by her fellow housemates suggest, even a TV series best known for being exceptionally wholesome risks becoming a pressure cooker of expectations for its stars.
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Elon Musk: The Eccentric Genius Who Put America Back in the Space Race
by Ali El Shamy
Child Prodigy Shows Early Promise Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 1971 ,28 in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother, Maye Musk (nee Haldeman) is a dietician and a model who still does photo shoots to this day. His father Errol Musk is an electromechanical engineer. From a young age, Elon showed a deep curiosity for the world around him and he would quench that thirst for knowledge by reading anything he would get his hands on, from science books and encyclopaedias to comic books and science fiction novels. At the age of ten, Elon got a Commodore VIC20- computer and from there his love for programming was born. Elon would go on to learn the BASIC programming language in three days, which for most novice users takes six months to learn. Two years later, he made his first entrpreneurial venture when he programmed a video game called Blaster which he sold to a tech magazine for 500 US dollars. His niche interests did not make him the most popular kid at school and he was bullied throughout his school years.
Expanding His Horizons During the Early Years of the Internet Unlike many renowned tech entrepreneurs who have dropped out of university, Musk pursued and completed a bachelor’s degree. His university years weren’t a straightforward journey, as he transferred out of South Africa’s University of Pretoria and Canada’s Queen’s University before finally settling at the US’s University of Pennslyvania where he graduated with a degree in physics, and economics, respectively. Musk would then join a number of internships at Silicon Valley in 1994. One year later, he started a PhD course at Stanford University, but he would drop out days later to chase a dream within the dot com boom of the 1990s.
Early Success and Paypal Shortly after his educational pursuits, Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. Zip2 was an online city guide which was intended for the newspaper industry, the database contained information such as city maps and yellow pages. The business venture proved successful, as major American newspapers like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune signed contracts with Zip2 to obtain the database’s service. Computer company Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999, and Musk reportedly acquired 22 million dollars in cash
from the purchase Musk would use the money obtained from Zip2’s sale to found X.com, an online payment and money transfer service. At the time, another tech venture, Confinity, was providing the same service. Instead of competing with Confinity, Musk decided to merge with it, and the new merger was called PayPal, which was the name of Confinity’s money transferring service. Musk would later became PayPal’s CEO. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal and the purchase left Musk with 165 million dollars.
Tesla: Revolutionizing the Auto Industry In 2003, Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, two Silicon Valley engineers, founded Tesla, an automobile company that aimed to produce only electric vehicles. Elon Musk was one of the early investors for the company. Right off the bat, Tesla faced an uphill battle to make electric vehicles appealing to the masses, as most consumers viewed them as too costly and not as efficient as their petrol counterparts. As such, the company planned to use lithium ion batteries to power its vehicles with the idea being that such technology would become cheaper over time. Secondly, the company would take the risky decision of producing a high-end sports car before a more affordable vehicle, in order to prove that electric cars can perform just as well as petrol cars. In 2008, Tesla unveiled its first car, the Roadster sports car. The Roadster was one of the fastest sports cars in the market, and proved that electric vehicles could perform just as well as traditional gas powered cars. However this early victory came at a massive cost. As the company produced 93 per cent of the Roadster’s parts, the venture proved expensive and the company was on verge of collapse. The founders, Tarpenning and Eberhard, left Tesla but Musk remained as he took over as CEO. Musk managed to salvage the company through cutting its workforce, borrowing funds from the government and forming a strategic partnership with Mercedes. In 2017, Tesla introduced the Model 3, or the car for the masses. At a retail price of around 54,000 dollars the Model 3 proved to be much more affordable than the company’s Roadster which retails at around 200,000 dollars. The Model 3 is a massive success as it accounts for 80 per cent of Tesla’s sales. This also helped the company become an emerging player in the market as sales data shows that the Tesla delivered 368,000 vehicles by the end of 2019. To further cut production costs, Musk unveiled a plan for a “gigafactory” in 2013, this massive factory would mass produce the parts
needed for electric vehicles. The Giga Nevada began operations in 2016, and expansions to the factory are still made to this day.
SpaceX and Humanity’s Transition to Become an Interplanetary Species Elon Musk has always been fascinated with space exploration. However, his passion goes beyond making space discoveries, in an article he wrote in 2017 Musk explained that he believes humanity is destined for two separate paths. The first path is to remain on Earth, however he believes that this option would expose us to extinction since he believes that a doomsday event will happen eventually. Consequently, humans can choose a second path, namely to establish a space colony on the planet Mars. It is this belief that humans could and should become an interplanetary species, which is the main driving force behind his space exploits.
In 2002, Musk used the money he earned from PayPal’s sale to found Space Exploration Technologies, more commonly known as SpaceX. One of the goals of SpaceX is to massively decrease the cost of space exploration; Musk figured that one of the biggest costs of sending out space shuttles was the fact that costly launch rockets could only be used once. As such, Musk wanted to create launch rockets that could safely land back to Earth intact, thereby preventing the need to keep producing new launch rockets for every mission. Since SpaceX is a privately owned space company, most people thought that it would never be able to carry out space exploration missions. However, one of Musk’s admirable traits is his drive to achieve the seemingly “impossible”. During the company’s initial years, SpaceX started working on the Falcon 1 and the Falcon 9 rockets. In 2006, SpaceX attempted to do its first eversuccessful launch as the Falcon 1 was slated to take flight on March 26 of that year. However, this maiden flight ended in failure due to a fuel line rupture. On September 2008 ,28, the Falcon 1 was successfully launched into orbit, this was a pivotal moment in space exploration history as it marked the first time a privately owned company launched a rocket into space. SpaceX’s success would continue throughout the years as it made 88 successful rocket launches and 35 reused flights. Moreover, the company produced the Dragon spacecraft, which has been flown 25 times on top of a Falcon 9 rocket.
Putting America Back on the Space Map Ever since the mid 20th century, two major global powers have dominated the space exploration field, the United States and Russia. In 2011, NASA conducted the last manned mission using American made vehicles as it retired its Space Shuttle program. Although NASA never stopped manned missions, it has been using Russian produced spacecraft ever since 2011. Undoubtedly, this caused the US space industry to decline in prestige. Nevertheless, a partnership set up the previous year between SpaceX and NASA ensured that the US would once again have its moment under the sun. This partnership paid off as by 2020, SpaceX was prepared to use its vehicles to launch NASA astronauts into space. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were set to make history on May 27, but bad weather conditions forced NASA and SpaceX to delay the mission to three days later on
Saturday May 30. Thankfully, the May 30 launch went as planned as the Falcon 9 successfully sent the Dragon spacecraft into space. Moreover, the Falcon 9’s launcher successfully landed ensuring its reuse value, while the Dragon made its way to the International Space Station. This occasion was an important historical milestone for SpaceX as it successfully launched humans into space for the first time and it also became the first privately owned company to send NASA astronauts to space. Elon Musk’s space ambitions are only just beginning. He is still adamant on his vision for a space colony on Mars. On his Twitter page, Musk has stated that he intends to send one million people to the red planet by the year 2050, where they will settle and establish a brand new civilisation.
