[2013.03.10] Bungeishunju - Figure skating: Yuzuru Hanyu, the pride of Japanese men

[yuzurujenn]

*Machine translation, inaccuracies exist. Please do not comment in this thread other than translations*

 

 

Source: https://bunshun.jp/bungeishunju/articles/h4852 (paid article)

 

Figure skating: Yuzuru Hanyu, the pride of Japanese men

 

He skates 24 hours a day without a cell phone. The 18-year-old says, "I want to be a top athlete." Here is his true face...

 

Spoiler

Last fall, at the tender age of 17, Yuzuru Hanyu achieved the world's highest score in the men's short program (SP), and at the end of the year he became the first All-Japan champion.

 

　The rising star of the figure skating world is spending the long winter in Toronto, Canada. In Toronto, temperatures drop below freezing every day, so even he, who is from Sendai, feels the cold. He has been in Toronto for ten months. He is still not good at English, and there are no Canadians around him to talk to about his troubles. He does not like eating out, and only eats food cooked by his mother. He does not have a cell phone, so he does not talk to his friends in Japan on the phone. One might imagine a lonely and cold winter for an 18-year-old, but for him it is a hot and burning winter.

 

"Right now, I can't stop thinking about skating. It's 100% skating. I don't mind if I don't get any texts from my friends because it's not related to skating. I've never had a cell phone before, so I don't see the point in having one now."

 

　Hanyu answered nonchalantly, as if asking, "What's wrong with that?"

 

　In fact, Hanyu's life in Toronto is dominated by figure skating even away from the rink. This can be seen in the "family meetings" at the Hanyu household. A family meeting is a strategic meeting where Hanyu watches skating videos to study his own form and keeps an eye out for anything he can steal from his rivals. He currently lives with his mother in an apartment in Toronto, so when he returns home after practice, the two of them hold a family meeting.

 

"My mother doesn't have a theoretical understanding of skating, but because she doesn't know much about it, she gives me advice based on her intuition. Her perspective is often unexpected and helpful."

 

　Just before the Four Continents Championships in Osaka in February this year, he had a family meeting in Toronto late at night and got a grip on the form for the highly difficult "quadruple Salchow." His biggest challenge now is to improve the success rate of this jump.

 

　At the rink, he practices with his coach, analyzing his skating theoretically, and at home, he watches videos with his mother and gets advice. He combines all of this to establish his own skating theory and sense. He doesn't have time to call his friends, and there doesn't seem to be a moment in his 24 hours when he thinks he needs a cell phone.

 

　At 173cm tall and weighing 53kg, he has a slender build with a perfect 8-head body. Like Bando Tamasaburo, he has an egg-shaped face suited to performing as a female actor, and his skin is translucently white. At first glance, Hanyu appears quiet, but whenever he opens his mouth, he repeatedly and greedily repeats, "I want to win, I'm frustrated, I want to get stronger."

 

　Japan's men's ace, Takahashi Daisuke, also laughed and said this.

 

"Hanyu-kun may look very thin, but he has a very manly personality. He's young, he's got a fierce mouth, and he's really cute. I'm more of a coward."

 

　While the ace speaks modestly, the junior Hanyu speaks confidently of his dreams and continues to produce steady results. With his limitless talent, expectations are already high that he will be a gold medal candidate at the Sochi Olympics. We followed the trajectory of 18-year-old Yuzuru Hanyu.

 

I won't change my hairstyle no matter what

　Hanyu was born in Sendai in 1994. His older sister had been taking skating lessons at a nearby rink, so he first stepped onto the ice at the age of four. He had a tendency to get nosebleeds, and the sight of him staggering around competition venues with tissue stuffed up his nose gave him the air of a sickly, pretty boy.

 

"When I was little, I never came first in any competition, and at best I would come second. I thought every day, 'I want to win, I want to win.' But I thought, 'If I practice and work hard and lose, it'll be even more frustrating,' so I hated practicing. The turning point came when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school. I practiced all day outside of school, morning and night, with a coach who taught me thoroughly from the basics. The first time I practiced seriously, I won the All-Japan Novice Championship (for third to fifth graders). It was the first win in my life. I realized that 'if I practice, I can win.' But the next year, I became overconfident in my own abilities and stopped practicing again. When I couldn't win two years in a row in fifth and sixth grade, I felt incredibly frustrated. Since then, I’ve been thinking, 'Let’s learn to love practice. Let’s learn to love skating.'"

 

　In his first year of junior high school, he won the Novice Championship again (for fifth graders to first-year junior high students). He also showed great performance in the All Japan Junior Championships, which was for a group one year older than him, and placed third as a special participant. It was around this time that he began to be called a "once-in-several-decades talent." His idol was Evgeni Plushenko, a Russian prodigy who won a gold medal at the Turin Olympics and a 3-time world champion.

 

"His quadruple jumps, his aura, everything about him is amazing. I also imitated Plushenko when it came to the Biellmann spin (a spin in which you lean back and grab your leg), which very few men can do, but I was able to do it."

 

　As a child, he had a bob haircut like Plushenko, and even though his friends called him a "mushroom," he stubbornly refused to change his hairstyle. During his junior years, he advanced with the momentum of skipping steps while running up a staircase, and at the age of fifteen, he reached the top of the world by winning the 2010 World Junior Championships.

 

　He made his senior debut in the fall of 2010 with much fanfare and successfully completed his first quadruple jump at his debut competition, the NHK Trophy.

 

"I was so nervous the night before (the NHK Trophy) that I couldn't sleep at all. I was so excited that I even got a nosebleed (laughs). But if I could land a quadruple jump, I would feel like I had joined the senior league, so I was determined to do it."

 

　In the case of men, there are many cases where results do not come immediately due to the large difference in muscle and physical strength between juniors and seniors, but such a wall did not matter to Hanyu. Able to turn pressure into a positive, he enjoyed the fierce competition of the senior level and won the silver medal at the Four Continents Championships in February 2011, the final competition of his season, becoming the youngest medalist in the history of the tournament.

 

Don't rest on your laurels as a disaster victim

　Just after finishing a successful season, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck Japan while he was practicing at a rink in Sendai.

 

"I ran outside with my skates on. Our house was destroyed and we had no electricity or running water, so we went to an evacuation center as a family, and it was only the next morning that we learned about the tsunami. As I spent four days in the evacuation center listening to the radio, I considered giving up skating. My first priority was that we needed to live together as one family."

 

　Hanyu, who had already grown into a top skater, received a lot of support. Relying on his childhood coach, he resumed training in Kanagawa Prefecture on March 21, ten days after the earthquake. As the rink in Sendai continued to be closed, he began traveling around the country to ice shows, using them as training grounds.

 

"In the show, I performed Swan Lake. It starts with a dark tone, as if struggling, and ends with an image of facing forward and taking flight. It matched my own state of mind and circumstances perfectly. In shows, I focus on captivating the audience, so it became a new way to strengthen my expressive ability. Thanks to everyone’s support, it turned out to be a fulfilling off-season."

 

　Hanyu answered that question with ease, but even with the season approaching, his usual competitive side had disappeared.

 

"When I went as far as the southern area of Sendai Airport, there was a cruel scene with piles of debris scattered everywhere. It was originally a residential area, and beyond the rubble, I could see the sea. There were students at Tohoku High School, where I go, who lived in coastal towns like Shiogama and Kesennuma. In front of the media, I said things like, ‘I want people to feel how we’re doing our best even after the disaster,’ but the damage from the earthquake and tsunami was truly severe, and no matter how much I skated, nothing would change.  I thought it was a selfish and idealistic idea to think that everyone will be happy if I work hard... I began to wonder, 'What should I do?'"

 

　Still, amidst his struggles, Hanyu came up with an answer in September, just before the season began.

 

"I'm being sent overseas (to competitions) because my abilities as a skater are recognized. Not because I was affected by the disaster. That’s why fighting with the mindset of being a representative of the disaster victims would just be an excuse to go easy on myself. I’m always asked to give a message to the disaster areas, but I must not let myself get carried away by those feelings. If things go on like that, my title will end up being ‘disaster victim.’ So I thought, ‘I have to firmly keep in mind that I’m a skater who competes based on results, nothing more.’"

 

　Having regained his usual assertiveness, he got off to a good start in the post-earthquake season, winning the Cup of Russia in November and taking his first title in the Grand Prix (GP) series, in which the world's top skaters compete.

 

“My style is to say out loud, ‘I will definitely win,’ and then charge toward that goal with everything I have. When you say it, it stays in your heart like a kind of word-spirit (kotodama). If you only think about it and make a decision in your head, the human brain tends to forget, and it’s easy to fool yourself. Once you say it out loud, the responsibility becomes heavier, and there's also the embarrassment if you lose. But more than anything, the joy when you achieve it is on a completely different level.”

 

　After the award ceremony, the gold medal he won was placed around the neck of Nanami Abe, his coach, who has been mentoring Hanyu since his junior days.

 

"My rule is to put the medal on Nanami-sensei first, and then give it to my mother after I get back to my hotel room. It's a rule to show my gratitude for the support that has allowed me to be here."

 

　To show his gratitude, he touches the ice when he comes down from the rink and bows to the rink after their performances. They have an old-fashioned and meticulous side to them that values courtesy.

 

To show his gratitude, he touches the ice when leaving the rink and bows to it after his performance. He has a traditional and meticulous side that values etiquette.

 

It was this Hanyu who faced his next turning point at the World Championships held in France in March 2012. After making jump mistakes, he fell behind in the short program, placing seventh. Despite that, he received loud applause and many cheers. Before the free skate the next day, something changed in his heart.

 

"Until then, I had been unable to accept the support being given to me as a representative of the disaster victims. I always thought of myself as someone who should be giving encouragement to the disaster victims, and I was conflicted about not being able to do anything. But when I made mistakes at the World Championships and still received so much support, I realized, ‘Ah, I’m actually the one being supported.’ From that moment, I was finally able to accept everyone’s cheers straightforwardly.” 

 

　He was on the edge of defeat, but he put all his energy into his free program and came in second, winning the bronze medal at the World Championships. In the eyes of the usually spirited and competitive young boy, for once, tears could be seen.

 

Entering Coach Orser's door

　In spring, with his World Championship medal on his chest, he made the decision to cross the ocean without waiting for the cherry blossoms in Sendai to bloom. Figure skating was originally born in Europe as “ice dance,” and gained popularity as a sport in North America. Moreover, most of the judges scoring the competitions are from Europe and America. Even at seventeen, Hanyu felt the limits of training only within Japan.

 

However, crossing the sea meant parting ways with Coach Abe. It was a big decision for Hanyu. 

 

"It was Nanami-sensei who brought up the idea of going overseas. I think she meant going to a training camp, not to change coaches. But after thinking about it, I decided to go overseas not to 'change my coach', but as 'an opportunity to take a new step.' I was wavering. I also felt that I wanted to stay in Sendai. But since I had come this far as a skater, I thought I should take a step forward on my own, to meet everyone’s expectations."

 

　He chose Toronto, Canada to study under coach Brian Orser, who trained Vancouver Olympic gold medalist Kim Yuna (South Korea).

 

“I can only land one type of quadruple jump, the toe loop, but by the Sochi Olympics, there would be a time when two types are necessary. So I decided strategically to first focus on quadruple jumps. That’s why I thought, ‘I want to see up close the jumps of Javier Fernandez (Spain), who can do two types of quads, and I want to learn from Brian Orser, who coaches him.’ I’m the type who grows by competing with rivals, so I wondered how much I could change if I practiced every day in an environment alongside a top skater like Javier and felt that pressure daily.”

 

　In fact, before making this decision, he had also considered going to Europe, such as Russia. In figure skating, there are two major styles: the European style, which is beautiful and precise skating, and the North American style, which emphasizes speed and power. Ultimately, the goal is the same, as they aim to achieve the coexistence of beauty and power, but the approaches are different. Hanyu’s strengths are closer to the Russian style, which emphasizes beauty. Although many around him strongly believed “Russia is the better fit for Hanyu,” his thoughts were different.

 

“For example, if I went to Plushenko’s coach, I’d end up skating exactly like Plushenko. That’s not what I want. I want to absorb the good parts, but I don’t want to become Plushenko. I want to establish my own skating.”

 

Plushenko had once been the admired emperor whom Hanyu copied both in hairstyle and technique, but he no longer wanted to be dyed in the same color.

 

His life in Toronto began in May 2012. Starting with fundamental skating, he absorbed techniques one after another in all areas, including new quadruple jumps and expressive skills.

 

At a competition held in Finland in October 2012, he succeeded in two types of quadruple jumps and won first place. At a competition held in Japan that same weekend, both Takahashi and Takahiko Kozuka only attempted one type of quadruple jump.

“My thinking was, if not now, then when will I challenge myself? Although my success rate was still low, it wasn’t zero, so I decided to attempt two. Also, it was still the season when I was seventeen or eighteen years old. I thought it was time to change everything. It was still a pre-Olympic season, so it was okay to lose. This was the season to be given various trials, suffer, and build strength.”

 

The dignity of a champion, the battle with oneself

　When the GP series began in October last year, Hanyu scored the world’s highest score with his best performance including a quadruple jump in the short program on the first day of the opening event in the United States. However, on the free skate the next day, as if he had become a different person, he fell on both of his quadruple jumps and finished second overall.

 

“After the short program, I thought, ‘The competition isn’t over yet, so I shouldn’t be happy,’ and I repeatedly told myself, ‘Calm down.’ Those words stayed with me like kotodama (the spirit of words), and instead of feeling nervous during the free skate the next day, I was far too calm.”

 

For Hanyu, who had always chased after the seniors’ backs, it was impossible to process becoming a world record holder overnight. In a way, that’s only natural. What’s more surprising is that he quickly corrected his mistakes and showed great results at the NHK Trophy a month later.

 

He broke his own world record in the short program, and in the free skate, he steadily landed his jumps, defeating the ace Daisuke Takahashi to win first place. Hanyu analyzed his two Grand Prix performances like this:

 

“The failure at the competition in America was because the very thought of ‘I shouldn’t be happy after the short program’ meant I was fixated on the short program results. The idea of ‘Let’s forget the short program’ was the cause of the failure. I should have thought, ‘Let’s focus on the free skate.’ So at the NHK Trophy, after the short program, I gave a guts pose and was really happy. That method worked well.”

 

From the position of a challenger to a battle with himself — Hanyu swiftly climbed to yet another higher stage.

 

On December 7, 2012, he celebrated his eighteenth birthday during the Grand Prix Final held in Sochi, Russia. It was the world’s top competition of the first half of the season. He placed third in the short program and second in the free skate, earning a silver medal while holding off the world champion Patrick Chan, who was widely recognized by everyone. However, the first words he said were:

 

"I'm shocked I wasn’t first in the free skate! I’d be happy with a silver medal if I had been first in the free skate… but being second, even with a medal, it doesn’t feel like I won."

 

After the competition ended, reporters, realizing he had aimed for a complete victory, unanimously said, “That’s so like Hanyu.”

 

　In December at the All Japan Championships, he defeated Takahashi to shine as the Japanese champion for the first time. Although it was a domestic competition and the scores were considered unofficial, he once again surpassed his own world record in the short program. Hanyu’s momentum was unstoppable.

 

“I don’t feel any pressure. From now on, I’m looking forward to how I can break my own records. Everyone says there is a unique tension at the All Japan Championships, but I didn’t feel any of that this time.”

 

　He answers with a straight face. However, when he is at a joint press conference with Takahashi, he suddenly puts his senior in the highest position and brags, "Takahashi-senpai is someone I look up to in every way. I don't feel like I can surpass him, he's someone above me." Of course, Takahashi responds half-jokingly, "No, no, we're competing on an equal footing," but the sparks of rivalry were clearly visible.

 

I want to be the best

 

Hanyu uses the phrase "rank in skating." He says that his skating doesn't have rank yet. He said this in an interview in Toronto last fall.

 

“I want to become a top-class athlete. I want to acquire that class. I don’t want to say things like ‘I’ll become the absolute king’ like Plushenko and stretch myself beyond my reach, only to have my fingers just barely touch the podium. In that sense, I don’t feel like I have truly become the Japanese champion yet, and though I received a high score, I don’t think my skating matched that score. From inside my heart, to become a top-class athlete, a feeling of keeping my fighting spirit hidden inside has begun to grow.”

 

Compared to his previous statements, this was unusually humble. When asked why, Hanyu answered, “It’s because of the environment in Canada.”

 

“Since coming to Toronto, my English isn’t very good, so I’ve come to swallow what I want to say and organize it within myself. From that, a style naturally developed of ‘controlling what I want to say inside my heart.’ Of course, as an athlete, I still have fighting spirit, and I haven’t lost my soul.”

 

With less than a year left until the Sochi Olympics, one wonders how far Hanyu’s rapid growth curve will reach.

 

“If I can compete in the Olympics, I want to go for the win. I have always dreamed of winning the Olympic gold medal. But after the earthquake and receiving support from many people, my thinking changed, and the gold medal became a more concrete ‘goal.’ I feel the Olympic gold is necessary as a starting point for conveying the charm of skating, supporting the disaster areas, and giving back.”

 

Then, narrowing his slender eyes even more, the boy smiled mischievously.

 

“I think the Olympics will surely be a place where I can receive something like the pride of Japanese men’s skating, so I’m already excited now.”