Japanese sports icon hangs up paddle, retires from table tennis
Champion Ai Fukuhara beloved in both her home country and China
Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara announced on Sunday that she is retiring from competition.
“Recently, I’ve found the answers within myself that I have been searching for. From the standpoint of an athlete, I’m drawing the line here,” she wrote on her blog.
“I first gripped a racket at the age of 3 years and 9 months, turned professional at 10 and began playing for the national team at 11,” she wrote, adding that it had been a long journey.
As young Japanese players are making fast progress in the game, she said she could now retire and hoped to continue to contribute to the table tennis and sports communities.
The Japanese athlete’s retirement announcement has also stirred her Chinese fans, as the 29-year-old Fukuhara, who was regarded as a “child prodigy” in table tennis in Japan, has close bonds with China.
She went to Shenyang, capital of Northeast China’s Liaoning province for training at the age of 10 and can speak fluent Mandarin with a northeastern accent.
“What impressed us most was her high popularity and high-level focus on playing table tennis,” Wang Yu, chief coach of the Shenyang table tennis team, told Shenyang Daily.
At that time, every time Fukuhara came to Shenyang
Ai Fukuhara (top) representing Japan competes during the women’s table tennis singles semifinal against defending champion Li Xiaoxia of China at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
for training and competition, she was always followed by cameramen and sometimes even filmed the whole day, Wang said.
Fukuhara worked hard in training, leaving herself little time for rest, Wang noted, adding that after the required daily training sessions, the young player would practice for another one or two hours. On weekends, she also liked to ask other players that she got along well with to accompany her to the table tennis gym. Her favorite Chinese dish is
which is skewers of meat, vegetables and tofu products dipped and cooked in a numbing and spicy soup, Wang recalled.
When shopping at the supermarket, Fukuhara loved walking around the stationary section, counting the pocket money her mother gave her to spend on her beloved notebooks and pens, Wang said.
Tang Yuanyuan, Fukuhara’s private coach since 2002, said that under the influence of Fukuhara, table tennis, which once witnessed a downturn in Japan, is thriving again in the country.
Currently, the number of registered table tennis players younger than 18 has reached 300,000 in Japan, according to Tang.
Fukuhara feels she is lucky to have taken part in promoting table tennis in Japan and enabling her Chinese fans to have a chance to learn more about Japanese sports development, Tang told Shenyang Daily.
Commenting on Fukuhara’s retirement at the request of a Japanese journalist at a regular briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said that she is not only a favorite player for Japanese people, but also enjoys high popularity in China, because of her lovely character and outstanding performance in the table tennis field.
“We hope that more and more people in both China and Japan are involved in promoting exchanges and friendships between the two countries,” Hua said.
The Japanese women’s table tennis team led by Fukuhara won silver at the London Olympics in 2012 and bronze at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Fukuhara married Chiang Hung-chieh, a table tennis player from Taiwan in 2016. She gave birth to a baby girl last year and has not competed since.
Fukuhara will return to Shenyang from time to time, Tang said, “because this is her home in China, where there are too many of her friends and much of her favorite cuisines”.