Last weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to the Kodokan to watch the East Japan Businessmen’s Team Tournament (第53回東日本実業柔道団体対抗大会). This tournament featured the top club teams in the eastern part of Japan and several olympians, world team members and national team members competed. This is one of the most competitive leagues in Japan, if not the world. Though many of the current national team members took a rest after the olympics, Naohisa Takato, Masashi Ebinuma, Misato Nakamura and Ami Kondo were in attendance to cheer on their company teams.
Among the standout athletes competing, the most famous were Daiki Kamikawa (Keio Gas), Kaihan Takagi (JRA), and former olympic silver medalist, Hiroshi Izumi (VILLAGE)……yes, that Hiroshi Izumi. He’s STILL competing despite being much heavier than when he took the silver medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004.
The thing that I like most about these company team tournaments is that the variety of athletes is really varied, ranging from retired judo competitors competing for the fun of it, to world champions using these tournaments as tune-up matches for IJF World Tour events. You also get to see matches with huge weight disparities that make for interesting matchups. Hiroyuki Akimoto had his final retirement match against Daisuke Konno, a +100kg category competitor and won via his trademark seoinage.
The East Japan region comprises the majority of the top club teams, minus only a few top teams such as Asahi Kasei , New Japan Steel, and Kyushu Electric Works. The women’s side featured Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, home to Misato Nakamura and Ami Kondo. In this tournament, national team members, Chizuru Arai, Rika Takayama, Nami Nabekura, and Momo Tamaoki led Mitsui Sumitomo to a really easy win, making the women’s tournament a bit anti-climactic. The matches weren’t even that close. In the final, they defeated JR East Japan, which is now coach by former world champion Tomoko Fukumi.
Aside from the top teams, there were some really intriguing teams as well. The Tokyo Fire Department made it to the semi-finals in the 3rd division with a team whose ages were 36, 42, 38 and 42. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get any footage of their matches as I was concentrating on the top athletes most of the time. In my opinion they had the most sophisticated judo of the tournament and gave me some motivation to keep learning despite being well past competition age.
The final results had Daiki Kamikawa’s Keiyo Gas team winning the 1st Division. In the 2nd division, Toshiba Plant Systems won, and I thought they were the most entertaining team of the tournament. They are an excellent team and if they had a bit more size and depth, they could probably do fine in the 1st division. In the third division, the Self-Defense Force Sports Science School defeated Senko in the final. You may remember their standout athlete, Daisuke Asano, who effectively ended Tadahiro Nomura’s bid to make it to his fourth straight olympics in Beijing, in 2008 by beating him in an olympic selection match.
Please enjoy the highlight reel I made and by all means, leave some comments or questions and let’s get a discussion going!
Leave a Reply