Sasuke - Japan's Greatest Sports Obstacle Challenge

Sasuke is an intriguing sports game show developed in Japan, in which 100 competitors endure up to four stages of various obstacles that challenge their physical prowess. All of them are hoping to beat all stages and win a monetary prize, as well as bragging rights for being one of only a handful of people to have accomplished all four stages and reached the top of Mount Midoriyama, the area where the competition is filmed in the Japan.

In Japan, the competition is aired twice a year as 4-hour specials. They are up to the 23^rd tournament, which aired in October. In the U.S., the competition is aired on the G4 cable network as 30 minute episodes, renamed Ninja Warrior.

The 100 challengers are chosen from all walks of life. Many submit videos hoping to be chosen, others are Japanese celebrities or comedians hoping to promote themselves, even others are athletes from different sports hoping to test their mettle. Any given tournament can begin with high school students, fishermen, firefighters, artists, and restaurant owners with amateur, pro, and even Olympic athletes all sharing the same course, starting on even ground.

Sasuke's Stage One is a timed course made of various obstacles that all 100 competitors take part in. It's used to thin the herd down. The obstacles have changed over the course of the 23 tournaments, as well as the time needed to complete the stage (the average has been around 2 minutes), but it's always been a mix of racing and endurance, with upper and lower body strength needed to finish the stage and press the red buzzer in time. Classic Stage One obstacles have included the Log Roll, where contestants grip onto a log and roll it down a chute (this later morphed into the vertical sliding Log Grip), the Warped Wall (a half-pipe that has to be climbed), and the Jumping Spider, in which a trampoline must be jumped upon into two side walls and the contestant scale across it with only their hands and feet. If at any point, a person falls off course and into the muddy waters waiting below, they are immediately disqualified. It doesn't matter if they have been on the course for less than a second or are within eyesight of the final buzzer, if they fall, they are out of the competition. It's not surprising, especially in the latest tournaments, to see 70%-90% of contestants fail in Stage One and walk away disappointed, and very wet.

Those that make it past Stage One have the privilege of running Stage Two. Also a timed stage, it's faster and contains more difficult obstacles, usually focusing on upper body strength and dexterity. For instance, one of the more infamous Stage Two obstacles is the recent Salmon Ladder in which contestants climb a ladder-like obstacle by hanging from a pipe suspended between small pegs and jumping up using only one's arms and the pipe, catching the pipe on a series of higher pegs. Again, the rules are the same as Stage One. If any competitor falls off course, they are disqualified from continuing.

Especially in the latest tournaments, as the obstacle challenges have become even more difficult, only a handful of people have the endurance and dexterity to make it into Stage Three. This stage is not timed but contains some of the most grueling obstacles, usually all related to retaining upper body strength. Some classic Stage Three obstacles include the Globe Grasp, in which contestants climb down the obstacle of only tiny globes they can barely grasp, and the Cliff Hanger, a ledge about 12 feet long, but only about 3 inches of depth for the contestant to climb across suing only their fingertips.

With such challenges, out of the 23 tournaments thus far, only a few people have ever endured the first three stages to enter Stage Four, the ascent of Mount Midoriyama, which is an approximate 75 foot climb up a steel tower using rope and a rope ladder (or some other combination, depending on the design at tournament time) in a very short period of time. To date, only two men have ever completed all four stages.

There's also a woman's version of Sasuke, named Kunoichi. It has the same rules, though the challenges are revised more for dexterity and lower body strength.

As tough and nearly impossible as the Sasuke competition sounds, the televised contest and commentary really gets the viewer involved in where these contestants are from, why they want to compete, and what it means for them. There's the obvious humor of some of the falls, or of the competitors that obviously have no hope of defeating the first stage, but there's also the rush of seeing top athletes do really well. Even more endearing is seeing average people that take the time to train and come back again and again to see if they can do better than before, especially when they do better than pro athletes!

Other shows have tried to ape the ideas behind Sasuke, but tend to lean toward parody, such as on ABC's Wipeout which designs the obstacles strictly to make the contestants fall. Sasuke is designed to be hard, but doable if one's body is conditioned and willing to try.

Whether you get a chance to see the Japanese televised broadcast, or watch the American edit on G4, which rebroadcast past tournaments as well, Sasuke (a.k.a. Ninja Warrior) is a worthy sports tournament that shows off the ultimate potential in human strength, speed, and stamina!