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Harasawa buries Ojitani to guide JRA to second consecutive All-Japan Businessmen’s Team Championship

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https://youtu.be/VVNBoxiXozo?t=35m3s

(It appears this video can’t be played outside of YouTube. My apologies. The video starts from the Harasawa・Ojitani match, but the entire final is broadcast.)

After suffering a surprise defeat at the All-Japan Open Weight Championships last April, Hisayoshi Harasawa came back with a big win over rival Takeshi Ojitani to guide his trade team, the Japan Racing Association to victory over Ojitani’s team, Asahi Kasei in the first division of the All-Japan Businessmen’s Team Championships. As mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, this tournament features probably the best teams in the world, with the exception being some of the teams in the German Bundesliga. Nearly all of Japan’s best athletes were present. Here is a look at a few of the roster’s of the top trade teams to give you an idea of the depth many of them have:

Japan Racing Association (JRA) 

Keita Nagashima (national team member)

Kensei Ikeda (defeated Shohei Ono last April)

Kaihan Takagi (2x world championships entrant)

Jin Kataoka (former All-Japan university championships runner-up)

Hisayoshi Harasawa (Rio Olympic silver medalist)

Kyle Reyes (former junior world champion and Canadian Olympian)

Mashu Baker (Rio Olympic champion)

Asahi Kasei

Kyohei Kakita (2x podium finisher at the All-Japan Open Weight Championships)

Yuya Yoshida (national team member)

Takeshi Ojitani (3x All-Japan Open Weight Champion)

Yusuke Kobayashi (national team member)

Taknori Nagase (Rio Olympic silver medalist)

Ryunosuke Haga (Rio Olympic bronze medalist)

New Japan Steel (新日本鉄住金)

Kazuhiko Takahashi (All-Japan Open Weight Champion)

Daiki Nishiyama (2x world silver medalist)

Keiyo Gas

Daiki Kamikawa (London Olympics representative 100+)

Shohei Shimowada (national team member)

Kyushu Electric Works

Ryu Shichinohe (world silver medalist)

Tora Shichinohe (former national team member)

The list could go on for quite a while, but you get the idea. In the 1st division finals of the 5-on-5 , open-weight team tournament, JRA narrowly defeated Asahi Kasei:

  1. Harasawa (JRA) draws Kakita (Asahi Kasei)
  2. Takagi (JRA) defeats Nagase (Asahi Kasei) via penalties
  3. Ohara (Asahi Kasei) defeats Nagashima (JRA) via penalties
  4. Ikeda (JRA) draws Ojitani (Asahi Kasei)
  5. Reyes (JRA) draws Haga (Asahi Kasei)

TIE BREAKER: Harasawa defeats Ojitani by ippon

This was the same way Ojitani has been defeated before and Harasawa seems to have taken a page out of Daiki Kamikawa’s playbook with that counter. The psychological advantage that comes with a win like this is huge in judo. Harasawa has had a tough post-olympic period and this win should give him the confidence that he is still at the top of the food chain in the heavyweight category in Japan. While Ojitani would have surely liked to have won, the stakes weren’t nearly as high for him as they were for Hirasawa, who has had a string of subpar appearances recently. Ojitani is probably looking to peak in a couple months time for his world championships debut in late August/early September. Both Hirasawa and Ojitani will be on another level at that time.

It has been a good few weeks of judo in Japan, which is one reason for the lack of updates to the blog. Lots of tournaments to attend, and little time to write. The next big tournaments will be the All-Japan University Team Championships, which I will blog about soon. On paper, this year’s Tokai University team may be the best team that I can ever recall. Led by Aaron Wolf and Kokoro Kageura, they are incredible from top to bottom. Best team of all-time? I’ll save that for a future post.

The countdown begins: Can Shohei Ono win the All-Japan Open Weight Championships?

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Shohei Ono (R) vs Takeshi Ojitani (L) at the 2014 All-Japan Open Weight Championships

With only 2 days to go before the All-Japan Open Weight Judo Championships, the judo headlines in Japan have again focused upon one athlete: Shohei Ono, the 2016 Olympic Champion in the middleweight (-73kg) division. The fanfare has been unusually lopsided, given the quality of the rest of the field. I don’t think I have seen the defending champion in a single headline in the Japanese news leading up to this tournament. What is understandable is the fascination the Japanese have with a lightweight(ish) athlete taking on the heavyweights. Though the chances of a lightweight winning are next to none in modern era judo, one can always hope.

It has been 45 years since a sub-80kg athlete won this tournament. 1972 Olympic Champion, Shinobu Sekine did it in 1972, though that victory was overshadowed by the two victories of Isao Okano, who won in 1967 and 1969. There is not a lot of footage, but you can see a clip of Okano here:

https://youtu.be/ltJUN5FU8G4

 

Since then, the closest a -80kg player came was in 1990, when Toshihiko Koga made it to the finals in an unbelievable run that might have gone his way had he been competing in the current time limit. He went nearly 8 minutes (the final was 10 minutes back then) with Olympic Silver medalist, Naoya Ogawa who outweighed the 76kg Koga by 54kg! From that day forward, no -80kg player has come even remotely close to winning, and from what I have read on the internet, many in the English speaking world are not aware that Ono has already had one crack at the elusive title, which ended in a third-round loss to the defending champion, Takeshi Ojitani back in 2014. Does he have what it takes to win it this time around? In order to answer that question, let’s first have a quick look at some of his matches against heavyweight opponents:

All 3 of the opponents in this playlist are top-class athletes. The first opponent, Kensuke Sakamoto was a former All-Japan university champion in the -100kg class. The second, Ryohei Anai was a former national team member in the -90kg category and made a switch up to the -100kg class in 2016. The third opponent in this playlist is Ojitani, who will likely come into this tournament at about 140kg. As you may have noticed if you watched these videos, Ono does not get off any throws, though he does defeat Anai by penalties.

For Ono to win, it would probably take nothing less than a miracle, especially under the current rule set. Koga, and even more so Sekine and Okano had privileges that Ono will not have in this tournament, the main one being leg grabs. Additionally, the pace and style of judo has changed quite considerably.

So, while it is fun to dream of a David vs Goliath type conquest from Ono in this tournament, I don’t believe there is much of a realistic possibility. I predict he will go out in his first match which I break down in this post, but if he somehow makes it out of his first match, I don’t see him getting past his most likely opponent in the third round, Aaron Wolf.

That said, Shohei Ono is truly one of the greats in judo and while I believe his selection to this tournament was more of a publicity stunt by the All-Japan Judo Federation, we wish him the best of luck and couldn’t be more thankful that he has decided to step up to this challenge.

This is judo, anything can happen! The cinderella story of Yumi Asaka’s 2011 Kodokan Cup

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(Hopefully some of you got that Fighting Films reference in the title. Danny Hicks, Neil Adams: if you ever read this, there’s no greater fan of your work than the JUDOFAN!)

2011 Kodokan Cup champion Yumi Asaka of Tokai University (photo source)

After yesterday’s rather pessimistic entry about -66kg national team member, Sho Tateyama, I think it appropriate to dedicate today’s blog post to those who, despite not having reached superstar status, have blessed us fans by never giving up when the going got rough. Their stories are a big part of what makes competitive judo so great. I can think of no better athlete that fits this criteria than former junior legend, Yumi Asaka.

Her high school rival, 2x Olympian, Misato Nakamura famously won the All-Japan Inter-high School Championships as a 1st-year high school student only to be denied ever competing in the tournament again as Asaka defeated her twice in the following years during the qualification stage (both were from Tokyo. Only the champion advanced to the All-Japan tournament). Asaka would be crowned All-Japan champion two years in a row, defending her title in the finals against former world champion, Haruna Asami. That same year, she went on a tear, winning three international tournaments as Japan’s top junior athlete in the -48kg category.

Upon graduation, she moved to Tokai University in 2008, where her results carried over, winning the France U20 International, and finishing 3rd at the Junior World Championships. A year later, she won the Belgian Senior International, which ended up being the last time she would stand on the podium at an international event. At the young age of 19, her career would head into a decline that she was never able to recover from.

Tomoko Fukumi, Haruna Asami, and Emi Yamagishi became the main protagonists in the years following the retirement of 5x Olympian Ryoko Tani, as Asaka essentially fell off the map. While her contemporaries made the transitions from universities to the elite trade teams of Japan, Asaka entered her final year of university, having failed to produce any remarkable results of note and thus, the decision was made to call an end to her career upon graduation. She decided that her final appearance would be at the 2011 Kodokan Cup, which takes place in November, and serves as a national tournament aimed at sorting out the national team for the following year. The Kodokan Cup is one of the most prestigious and competitive domestic tournaments in Japan, as it brings together the high schools (occasionally junior high students compete as well), universities, police departments, prison guards and trade teams for one huge tournament to decide the national team as well the representatives for the Tokyo Grand Slam (formerly Kano Cup) the following month. Only Japan’s “A” players (usually 1 per weight category) are absent.

As you probably have already guessed, the unheralded Asaka put in the performance of a lifetime, defeating world champion Tomoko Fukumi and junior world champion, Hiromi Endo in the process (source). She finished each match of the tournament by ippon. In her post-tournament interview, she announced her retirement and left the mat saying, “This is like a dream. This was my last tournament and I gave everything I had. I wonder if now, my name will be remembered just a little bit because of this victory” (rough translation). It was an unorthodox way of cementing her name in the laurels of judo folklore, but stories like hers are a part of what makes judo so great. After all, “This is judo. Anything can happen!”

At the conclusion of the tournament, Asaka quietly left competitive judo to teach at Matsumae Judo Juku, a junior club affiliated with Tokai University, and one of the most successful junior clubs in the history of judo. Please enjoy the final rounds of her incredible 2011 victory at the Kodokan Cup: