A “crazy Japan” roundup making the rounds overseas bundles 3 clips together: a mock ad selling wrist-cutting as a lifestyle choice, plus 2 blurry clips billed as a man assaulting a woman. Only the first one is an obvious fake, which seems to be the whole business model for these roundups.
Video 1
The wrist-cutting commercial parody
Video 2
A blurry clip filmed off someone else’s screen
Video 3
The face-blurred clip of someone toppling over
Clip 1 is a skit, not real footage. 2 or 3 women in school uniforms grin at the camera and pitch a “cute” wrist-cutting kit, with English subtitles doing the selling: “the design is cute,” “the blood becomes tastier,” and a red line drawn across a wrist for the close-up. The acting is broad enough that it reads like a scene lifted from an old splatter movie and dressed up as breaking news, not an actual TV spot.
The other 2 clips get billed as a man assaulting a woman, though neither backs that up. Clip 2 is filmed off a screen inside a Word document, toolbar and ruler visible the whole time, and through the blur all you can make out is 2 people ending up on the floor. Clip 3 shows someone with their face blurred out sitting close to whoever’s holding the camera, then tipping over backward, with nothing in frame to explain how or why. Someone’s trying to pass off a parody and a couple of blurry non-events as shocking TV, and it’s not working.
What the Thread Said
Most people clocked clip 1 as fake before it even finished, calling the acting too stiff for a real commercial; one viewer placed it exactly, recognizing it as a scene from an old splatter film rather than anything that aired. The other 2 clips split the room more: one commenter doubted clip 2 was even filmed in Japan, guessing China instead since nobody in the room bothered taking their shoes off. Another cracked that whoever stubbed out their cigarette in that clip was weirdly polite about it, using the ashtray instead of someone’s hand, which says plenty about the usual joke in these threads.
A History of Misattributed “Shocking Japan” Footage
The clip claims to show a Japanese man assaulting a woman, but unverified “shocking Japan” compilations have a track record of recycled or mislabeled footage.
- 94,937 domestic violence consultations in 2024, up 7.1% and the highest on record.
- 29,250 assault cases recognized nationwide in 2024, per National Police Agency stats.
- 27.5% of married women in Japan report physical violence from a spouse.
- Worldwide, about 1 in 3 women face partner violence, from 12% in Switzerland to 1 in 3 in Turkey.
- 2011 tsunami footage was relabeled as 2024 Noto quake footage before being traced and corrected.
Watch Next
A man brandishing a baton appears at Shinjuku Station. A middle-aged man with a child is also attacked.
The “three major animal-attack incidents” at Nasu Safari Park—the videos captured by tourists are absolutely shocking.
I imagine the victims in news stories—like the one about a man who suffered a ruptured eyeball after being attacked by a bear—probably end up looking something like this.
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