The Hachi #9: Springing forward
We made it to March, good job everyone!
As always, welcome to The Hachi and thanks for sticking with me for another week!
A bit of housekeeping before getting to the week’s points of interest: March is going to feature some Mysterious1 Format Changes, as my family are in town for a couple weeks and we’ll be doing a bit of traveling.
Please bear with me, and if you have any recommendations for Kyoto please drop them in the comments because I haven’t been a tourist there in roughly 15 years.
1. Another long-term deal for Ohtani
Sorry ladies (and maybe a few incredibly optimistic men), Shohei Ohtani is off the market.
The Dodgers star announced his nuptials on Thursday and revealed next to nothing about his new spouse to media later in the day, joining the pantheon of Japanese pro athletes and celebrities who are extremely secretive about the person they’ve committed to spending the rest of their lives with.
I rather liked artist Saeki’s attempt to portray the situation to scale, with a cameo from Shohei’s dog Dekopin, whose name was also an unnecessary mystery:
Unlike in western countries where player wives are Out There — see San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk’s wife Kristin going viral after designing a jacket for Taylor Swift — Japanese spouses tend to stay out of sight, whether out of concern for their online safety or talent agency contracts that have their celeb spouses on short leashes to minimize the impact of bad behavior.
Given how fervent Japanese fans and media can be when it comes to hunting down secret spouses, you can’t exactly blame Ohtani for keeping a lid on things. Look at figure skating legend Yuzuru Hanyu, who got married in August and divorced just three months later in the wake of media and fans doing their damndest to hunt down his partner.2
The king of weird wedding announcements may still be now-retired Yomiuri Giants and New York Yankees legend Hideki Matsui, who announced his 2008 marriage with a hand-drawn sketch of his wife in order to win a bet with teammates Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu.
2. Nadeshi-going-to-Paris
It was a bit of a nailbiter at the National Stadium on Wednesday, but Nadeshiko Japan got the job done, with Hana Takahashi and Aoba Fujino’s goals enough for a 2-1 win over a very determined DPR Korea side in the second leg of their 2024 Paris Olympics qualifying series.
The 2-1 aggregate win sees Japan join Australia’s Matildas — who had a much easier time in their own series, racking up a 13-0 aggregate win over Uzbekistan — in representing the Asian Football Confederation in Paris.
This was by no means an easy series, with the away leg — originally scheduled to take place in Pyongyang — being shifted at the last minute to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, leaving Japan’s Europe-based players in limbo as they waited to figure out which plane they’d need to board in order to join their teammates.3
A tense scoreless draw followed and the attention shifted back to Tokyo, where DPRK players were greeted by a few hundred well-wishers upon their arrival and 3,000 supporters on gameday, most of whom were students at Chongryon-affiliated schools.
The Japan Football Association used the strong sales in the DPRK end to encourage more fans to come out and support Nadeshiko Japan, and those efforts paid off with attendance totalling 20,777.
An official told me the JFA was more focused on selling tickets than filling them with giveaways — a strategy that has been debated since the start of the WE League amid a desire to attach higher values to women’s soccer in Japan.
Overall it was an error-filled game on Japan’s part: DPRK really went harder for the ball and they put a ton of pressure on goalkeeper Ayaka Yamashita, forcing her to make a Kaoru Mitoma-esque 1-millimeter clearance just before halftime (14:08 in the above video). But Japan showed their resiliency and held on at the end, marking the first time the team had earned Olympic qualification since the 2012 London Games.
Head coach Futoshi Ikeda did well to steer the team to the Olympics, but a much tougher task lies ahead as Japan and Australia prepare to face hosts France, the USWNT, defending champions Canada, Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand, Spain, and Germany, with Africa to determine its two representatives in April.
The biggest beneficiary of Wednesday’s game might be the WE League, which resumes this weekend after its winter break.
3. Another sumo scandal
It’s been a couple years since sumo has had a bullying scandal but this one is a doozy, with maegashira Hokuseiho — a promising young Mongolian who needed just three years to rise to the top-flight makuuchi division — retiring/being forced out the door after a Japan Sumo Association investigation found that he had routinely abused his younger stablemates, including physically beating them and stealing money.
YouTube content creator Chris Sumo has a pair of great videos that lay out the timeline of the scandal as well as the greater implications:
While Hokuseiho is now out of sumo, his stablemaster Miyagino — the former yokozuna Hakuho — will not escape consequences, including a demotion and pay cut for ignoring his wrestler’s conduct:
The JSA statement said Hakuho "significantly lacks quality and awareness as a stablemaster" after he failed to correct Hokuseiho's conduct for over a year. The JSA's director of communications, sumo elder Shibatayama, said there was "a suggestion to remove him from the JSA" at the compliance committee.
Hakuho, who drew criticism toward the end of his career for his unruly wrestling style and self-righteous behavior, was sternly warned that his stable will be closed should he or his protege cause trouble again, a source close to the matter said.
Writer and TV commentator John Gunning has offered hi ¥2 on how sumo can solve its bullying problem, but given the frequency with which such incidents come to light, it makes you wonder if the JSA is ever really going to get a handle on things.
4. Getting off the track
As I feel like I mentioned last issue, I had the opportunity to check out Sanfrecce Hiroshima’s new home, Edion Peace Wing Hiroshima, for the opening game of the J.League season.
It was nothing short of spectacular, and everything you’d expect from a soccer-specific stadium anywhere in the world. Entrances and food lines were managed well, not too much congestion in the open concourses (from which you can look out and see the pitch), the store was buzzling, and the fans being so close to the pitch just worked to create a phenomenal atmosphere.
Two days later, with near-freezing temperatures and a constant drizzle, I watched Tokyo Verdy face Yokohama F. Marinos in a rematch of the first-ever J.League game on May 15, 1993.
Despite the absolutely shitty weather, this one still drew over 53,000 to the National Stadium in Tokyo, but the vibes were definitely not nearly as immaculate as they were in Hiroshima.
If the J.League has figured out one thing over the last couple years, it’s that covering up the massive running track around the pitch improves the visuals significantly. But in the end there’s still such a massive gap between the fans and the pitch and it’s a shame that this is where some of the biggest games of the season are going to take place.
For now there’s little hope that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Japan Sport Council are going to consider honoring their original plans to remove the Kokuritsu track and turn the stadium into a ballsport-specific ground. But the more stadiums like Hiroshima’s that pop up — and there’s a lot of the coming in the next few years — the more pressure there will be on the capital to have one of its own.
You can listen to me talk about both games I attended on the latest main-feed ep of the J-Talk Podcast.
5. The Pan-Pacific Debate
I am once again back on my YouTube Bullshit™, for what this time was a fun discussion with Filippo from Tactical Manager TV comparing men’s soccer in Japan and the United States at the national team and club levels.
The chat was great, even if the discourse in the tweets and comments is… mind-bogglingly bad, but that’s honestly more reflective of USMNT/MLS fandom than anything else. Always happy to contribute to the conversation and get people thinking!
6. Is new-look PNC enough for Brave Blossoms?
World Rugby closed out February by announcing a revamped Pacific Nations Cup that will feature six teams, including Japan’s Brave Blossoms, contesting three-team pools followed by a knockout/placement tournament.
This year’s edition (and likely future editions as well, one would think?) will see Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga in Pool A and Japan, USA and Canada in Pool B, with each team hosting a home game before shifting to Tokyo for the semifinals/5th-place final and Osaka for the final and third-place game.
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Japan coach Eddie Jones sounds pretty bullish on the competition’s ability to give his team competitive fixtures:
“The Pacific Nations Cup fits in right next to the Rugby Championship and Six Nations in providing that regular competition for Pacific nations. Having finals is also a good way for players to experience games that have consequences, and it is great for Japan to host them in the first year, showing why it is a great rugby country.”
While any regular competition is good competition, and the U.S. hosting the finals every other year will help build up buzz for when they host the 2031 Rugby World Cup, the responses to World Rugby’s tweet kinda get at the crux of the matter: Japan, despite its strong performances at the RWC and inclusion in WR’s High Performance Unions list, still isn’t participating in the Rugby Championship, the Southern Hemisphere’s elite international competition.
In the end, tests against England and the All Blacks later this year still aren’t the same as competitive rugby, and it feels like Japan won’t have a serious shot at establishing itself as a RWC knockout-stage regular until the Brave Blossoms get more experience at that level. I’m not sure if more games against America and Canada are going to do the trick, and we’ll have to see whether World Rugby’s new international tournament is going to get closer to reaching that itch.
7. Second verse, same as the first
I’ve been on a Japanese hip-hop rabbit hole lately — entirely Patrick’s fault — and while listening to Apple Music’s Japanese Hip-Hop playlist this cypher from label 03- Performance caught my attention:
Rapper Jinmenusagi leads with:
頭ひとつふたつみっつ抜けた | I’m one, two, three heads above the rest
まるでWembanyama, Tominaga | Totally Wembanyama, Tominaga4
桜木？いやSAKURABA | Sakuragi? No, Sakuraba
でっかくなったもんだ | That’s how big I’ve gotten
Basketball and hip-hop have been intertwined for decades, but to hear a Japanese player — and one only in college at that — getting a shoutout alongside a star NBA rookie, one of Slam Dunk’s main protagonists5, and MMA pioneer/current pro wrestler Kazushi Sakuraba highlights the level to which the Japanese game is picking up cultural exposure at all levels.
This got me going down another rabbit hole on Genius.com, where a user-curated list of athletes with rap music references includes Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and Sadaharu Oh (plus Antonio Inoki?) but shockingly not Shohei Ohtani (who does have quite a few namedrops, including a Bad Bunny track that’s got 37 million YouTube views).
8. Getting drafty
Speaking of Japanese basketball, the B.League has announced some new decisions that have been made in preparation for the 2026-27 season, which will see the current three divisions scrapped in favor of B.League Premier, B.League One and B.League Next competitions.
The league’s first-ever draft will take place in January 2026, giving teams a chance to select high school and college players as well as young players with limited experience in overseas pro leagues (except for the NBA).
Draftees will be guaranteed three-year deals (two plus an option); first-round selections will be guaranteed salaries between ¥14-35 million, depending on their level of experience.
The B.Premier will have a salary floor/cap between ¥400-800 million ($2.65-5.32 million), while the B.1 will be set to ¥150-400 million. Each team will be allowed one “star” player whose salary will be recorded as ¥150 million for cap purposes, enabling them to splash on an ace who can potentially draw crowds and deliver wins.
Given the spectacle that the NBA and NFL drafts have become (and how boring NPB’s draft is, by comparison), I’m curious to see if the B.League can figure out how to make it an Event — especially as it will come during the middle of the season.
Because I haven’t figured out what they’ll be yet
Whose gender was never formally announced, and if we’re all being honest that whole thing was weird as hell, but you can’t really write about that without pissing off his fans and that’s a discussion for another issue
Meanwhile, DPRK’s players were reportedly training in Russia, as though they knew they’d be playing in West Asia…
There is a slight but non-zero chance this was a reference to B.League player/coach JR Sakuragi, but I digress
Newer reader and I’m glad to see a segment on the B.League! I discovered you through your coverage of the J.League, but with basketball being my main sports interest, I love seeing it also being covered!