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:
- Harasawa (JRA) draws Kakita (Asahi Kasei)
- Takagi (JRA) defeats Nagase (Asahi Kasei) via penalties
- Ohara (Asahi Kasei) defeats Nagashima (JRA) via penalties
- Ikeda (JRA) draws Ojitani (Asahi Kasei)
- 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.
Hi, thank you for the great and interesting post!
Could you explain, please, why were the fights so strangely arranged? I mean, it’s Harasawa (+100) fighting Kakita (-90) and Takagi (-100) fighting Nagase (-81) and staff… If I understood right, these were totally openweight? So it was just anybody against anybody in both teams? If so, why would they take people from -90 and -81 in the team at all? Also I saw the rosters and there are a lot of lightweights – Ono, Hashimoto, Takato, etc. Where were they fighting and why are they in the team if it’s all openweight?
Ivan, thank you for your comment. It is a good question. The tournament rules are that there are 5 players per team and no weight classes. Whichever team has more wins, are the winners. Because of this, there is a lot of strategy into who will fight who. Sometimes the coaches will try to match their weakest player against their opponents strongest player to make sure their top players have a chance to win. However, the coach can decide his/her team’s own order, but cannot see his/her opponents order, so they must guess about the lineup. In the case of JRA, they put Harasawa in the first slot because they did not want him facing Ojitani I would imagine. They wanted to make sure Harasawa would get a win and usually, the first spot goes to the lighter players.
About why Asahi Kasei put Nagase and Kakita in the lineup, both have good records against heavyweights. Kakita has twice finished third at the All-Japan Open Weight Championships, and Nagase has finished 5th. Remember, a draw is sometimes as good as a win in these team tournaments. The style of play is a lot less risky because they know that they can get 4 draws and only 1 win, and still win the match.
As far as the really lightweight players like Takato are concerned, they usually don’t get selected for these open weight team tournaments. There are also semi-pro individual tournaments with weight classes, and the lightweight players always compete with their sponsors emblem on their judogi, so it is good publicity for the sponsors.
Ryotokuji, which was the team of Akimoto, Kanemaru, Shishime, Hiraoka, etc. doesn’t really specialize in the team tournaments. Instead they focus on the winning in the lightweight categories in individual tournaments. Other teams, like New Japan Steel focus primarily on their heavyweights. Hope that helps! Thanks for the questions and please feel free to ask away!
Wow, thanks! That helped a lot! You do awesome job opening Japanese judo to the world!
Glad to know that you are enjoying my blog posts. Please let me know if there is a topic you are interested in knowing more about.
Hi, judo fan, I am also a big fan of your blog and I have learned so much about judo by reading your articles. I have one question that I have been wanting to ask you. It is about the players changing their weight categories. You have mentioned earlier in your reply to my comment that Hifumi Abe might move up to -73kg at some point. With -73kg category so hotly contested in Japan now, I am sure he prefers to stay in -66kg, and the Japanese judo fans will not want to see Ono and Abe fighting for one ticket to Tokyo 2020. So I wonder what happens if Abe keeps growing and comes to a point where -66 is no longer the right category for him. Ebinuma openly talked about his struggle to keep his weight down to 66kg and there were some speculations that he was actually ill-conditioned due to an excessive weight loss when he competed in Rio. Please correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that in general, Japanese judokas (excluding the young ones) are unwilling to change their weight categories compared to the European counterparts. Europeans (especially Georgians) seem to move up and (less often) down the weight categories as they wish, and many have been successful in different weight divisions. Are players in Japan under a big pressure to stick to their own categories?
MK, thanks for continuing to read my blog! That’s a good question. I don’t know that there is one answer that fits all Japanese athletes, but I think one major difficulty with changing weight classes is the way that athletes are called up to the national team. Getting onto the national team is a huge deal in terms of funding, competitions, practices, etc. If one changes weight classes, they simply can’t stay on the national team and move around in the categories. They would have to compete in the various qualification tournaments in their new category and if their performance is good enough, then they can get a spot on the team in that category. However, that is a tough decision because you don’t want to be missing out on IJF points, etc. You could miss a world championship or grand slam and never have a chance again to compete. However, I wish more would experiment with moving up. It worked out really well for Akimoto and also Hirotaka Kato.
Hope that answers your question a little bit.
I see. It makes perfect sense! Thank you as always for your prompt and thorough answer!