The Bachelor Japan
バチェラー・ジャパン
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
One successful man, a dozen-plus women, roses and elimination — the format Japan learned to love arguing about.
The Bachelor Japan is the Japanese edition of the American format, made for Amazon Prime Video since 2017. A successful single man meets a group of women who have come to win him. Over group dates, one-on-one dates and dates for two women at once, after which one of them goes home on the spot, he gets to know them, and at the end of each episode he hands roses to the women he wants to keep; the rest leave at once. Unlike the American original, the couples are kept apart at night. The actor Takumi Bando presents on location, and from the second season Koji Imada, Shingo Fujimori and Rino Sashihara watched from the studio.
The third season, streamed in September and October 2019, is the one whose ending became its own story. The bachelor was Shinya Tomonaga, a 31-year-old businessman from Kobe, and twenty women came. He gave his first-impression rose to Megumi Iwama, a 25-year-old grape farmer, and took her on the first date, then went several episodes without a date alone with her, which she told him had shaken her. After dates in Guam, five women remained at a hotel in Atami. Yuri Nakagawa, a DJ, asked him to decide there and then, and he told her he could not give her a rose. He visited the families of the last four, and three met his: Iwama; Haruka Nohara, a publicist; and Ayumi Mizuta, a former hostess from Osaka's Kitashinchi, who had told him that her fiancé broke off their engagement the year before. Nohara went next. In France Iwama told him she did not love him, and at the final ceremony he chose Mizuta and gave her a ring.
An epilogue filmed three months later undid it. A month after the finale Tomonaga had ended things with Mizuta, unable to forget Iwama, and pressed Iwama until she agreed to see him. In the studio he apologised to Mizuta, who returned the ring and said it had not been fate. Tomonaga and Iwama married in July 2020.
Starring
Takumi BandoHost
The actor who presents on location, leading each rose ceremony and ringing the bell that ends every cocktail party.
Koji ImadaPanel
The comedian who has led the studio commentary since the first season.
Rino SashiharaPanel
A former idol on the studio panel from the second season, who is moved to tears by the third season's epilogue.
Shinya TomonagaParticipant
The third bachelor, a businessman from Kobe, who chooses Ayumi Mizuta at the finale and a month later leaves her for Megumi Iwama.
Megumi IwamaParticipant
A grape farmer who wins his first-impression rose, tells him in France she does not love him, and after the show becomes his partner.
Ayumi MizutaParticipant
A former hostess from Kitashinchi, recovering from a broken engagement, whom he chooses at the finale and leaves a month later.
Why it matters
The Bachelor puts a hierarchy on screen and calls it romance: one man with money and standing, a room of women competing for him, and a rose that decides each week who stays. The Japanese edition promises no staging and no script, and its third season showed what that promise can cost. The finale ended with a ring. The epilogue showed the ring coming back. A choice made before the cameras had been reversed in private a month later, and the woman left behind heard the details in a studio filled with the women she had outlasted. The reversal divided viewers and was described in the press as the most controversial ending in the series. It also asked what a public declaration of love is worth when the man making it is still deciding, and what composure costs the person who pays for his honesty.