Searching for the next Asada, Japan rebuilds
TOKYO: Japanese figure-skating fans head into next month’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in an unusual position with no-one in their once powerhouse women’s team assuming the mantle of the retired Mao Asada. Olympic 2010 silver medalist and three-time world champion Asada, known in Japan by the affectionate nickname “Mao-chan,” retired in 2017, leaving the country’s legions of fervent fans, as well as the media, at a loss.
“There are a lot of skaters, but nobody really comes to mind as Mao’s successor,” said Hiroko Yamaguchi, a 41year-old secretary watching December’s Grand Prix Final in Japan. “There was just something about her. I got so much energy watching her skate.” The problem is not a lack of candidates. Six women fought to top the podium at December’s nationals and claim one of the two Olympic team spots, a prize ultimately won by Satoko Miyahara, 19.
The second spot went to Kaori Sakamoto, 17 and relatively unknown even in Japan, who finished second in the nationals in her first full senior season. “The Japan Skating Foundation (JSF) only cares about skill,” said Hirotaka Matsuoka, a professor of sports marketing at Tokyo’s Waseda University. “But TV and so on, they appear to be wavering over who to focus on and promote.” Asada was a household name for so long, she began attracting attention as a junior, that her retirement produced banner headlines and television stations broadcast her retirement media conference live.
“I think it boils down to these three overlapping factors: her tremendous success in a relatively long career, her tender age and cute and youthful looks, and her carefully curated public persona and frequent appearances in the media,” Michelle Cho, a visiting gender studies scholar at MIT who has studied sports in Japan, told Reuters in an email interview. “Asada has a ‘good girl’ or ‘girl next door’ kind of image that draws from Japanese feminine stereotypes of being chaste, humble, dutiful and a good homemaker.”
Probable successor
Miyahara was long seen as Asada’s probable successor, but suffered a stress hip fracture in 2016 that kept her out of competition, and the public eye, for roughly a year, dimming her popularity. Still, her dogged efforts at rehabilitation, covered extensively by the media, touched a chord in a culture that values perseverance. Her lyrical, floating routines to “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Madama Butterfly” also “speak to Japanese feelings,” according to a viewer at the Grand Prix Final, where she finished fifth. Sakamoto remains an unknown quantity, but her attitude and perky character, shown by her grin when her Japan nationals results came up, could make her appealing.