The Contender: The television series saw a live human at the competition awards

Nasubi, who had been randomly selected at an open audition, knew he was being filmed, but the explanation given to him about where the footage would go was vague and left him with the impression that it probably wouldn’t air.

In reality, the 22-year-old was slowly becoming one of the country’s biggest celebrities, as weekly updates on his progress became one of the most popular segments of variety show Denpa Shōnen.

Critics mostly hated the program, but it attracted a huge audience of young viewers.

The series began airing before the release of The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey as a man who is unaware that his life is being broadcast as a TV series.

And it would be another year before Big Brother launched in the Netherlands, ushering in a whole new era of reality television.

But despite being a harbinger of things to come, there remains relatively little awareness of A Life in Prizes, as the segment was known, outside of its territory.

“I think people have heard more about it in the last decade because YouTube has really exploded,” Titley told BBC News. “But at the time, it was never shown outside of Japan and South Korea. It was never intended to be presented outside of that world.”

Nasubi, an aspiring comedian at the time, knew few details of what the challenge would be before starting.

He was left in the windowless room, without clothing or basic items – not even toilet paper – and had no contact with the outside world.