The Hachi #11: Back at it
A Sho-time stopping scandal, sumo history, and Eddie's return
Welcome back to The Hachi — and thank you for your patience during a longer-than-expected break. Turns out that you have less free time than you think when your family’s visiting for the first time in seven years, who knew?
1. The elephant in the room
The Shohei Ohtani/Ippei Mizuhara gambling scandal has been the story of the month in Japan, and to be honest I still have no idea what to make of it.
Part of me is cynically reluctant to take a side on did-he-or-didn’t-he because we really don’t know, do we. For years, Shohei and Ippei have been arguably the biggest power couple in Japanese baseball, with the interpreter basically serving as Hand of the King to the larger-than-life star. They’re characters in a buddy comedy, not participants (willing or otherwise) in several million dollars worth of illegal activity — or so we thought.
The other part of me — naively or perhaps equally cynically — believes Ohtani’s side of the story, because Occam’s Razor favors it.
I can totally believe that Ohtani is so obsessed with the game of baseball that it is nearly his entire life, leaving little room for anything else beyond his cute dog and his mystery wife.
I can totally believe that Ohtani was so dependent on Mizuhara day-to-day that the latter was able — and more importantly, willing — to take advantage when his own demons got the best of him.1
And when it’s an interpreter at the center of things, I can absolutely see how lines can get crossed and stories can change as they did so early in this news cycle.
But I absolutely understand why so many are suspicious, because Ohtani’s camp has quite frankly done itself no favors by walling him off from everyone to the extent that they have.
Tim Keown’s remarkable piece for ESPN is a must-read to understand the extent of the Ohtani Enigma:
There is a heaviness to Ohtani, perhaps from the weight of projecting a nation's culture and values into the world, the culture and values of a nation that cares deeply about both. Someone who has never watched an inning of baseball would know there is something different about him, just by watching the confidence he exudes walking to the batter's box. His frame and bearing -- 6-foot-5, eternally upright -- allow him to walk through a crowd and fix his gaze just over the top of almost everyone's head. It has served him well as a means of practiced avoidance. Everyone is there; no one is there.
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Ohtani partakes in the outward displays of baseball bro-hood, like wearing the kabuto helmet while coursing through the tunnel of teammates in the dugout after a home run while with the Angels. But for the most part he hung out with Mizuhara, obsessed over his diet, slept as much as possible and worked on his game.
Some, like AP’s Greg Beacham, wonder if this saga won’t lead Ohtani to become closer to his teammates — which might go a long way toward uniting the most expensive clubhouse in MLB.
One thing this is absolutely going to result in is more scrutiny of interpreters such as Will Ireton, who’s stepped in to interpret for both Ohtani and teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto — though Japan researcher Robert Campbell is among others who have given his performance high praise.
2. Missed connections
A couple months ago I wrote about how Japan’s men’s and women’s soccer teams would both be playing crucial games — an Olympic qualifier for Nadeshiko and a WCQ/ACQ joint qualifier for the Samurai Blue — in the reclusive North Korean capital of Pyongyang within a month of each other.
As it turns out, not only did neither game take place at Kim Il Sung Stadium, but one was simply not held at all and will likely go down as a 3-0 default to Japan’s men.
One month after the women’s fixture was moved to Saudi Arabia just four days before kickoff, the men’s fixture — which was supposed to take place on Tuesday — was canceled entirely.
Though DPRK FA officials told the JFA and AFC — just before Japan’s 1-0 win at the National Stadium — that a recent increase in dangerous strep infections in Japan was behind the decision, NK News’ Joe Smith and Shreyas Reddy suggest things may have been more complicated:
“Opening up after COVID must be quite a challenge,” Aidan Foster-Carter, an honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, told NK News. “They bit the bullet and made the decision to host the game but then someone got cold feet and backtracked.”
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However, several experts expressed doubt that medical concerns were the main factor behind Pyongyang’s decision, particularly as the country has eased quarantine measures for visitors from other countries since last year.
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Given the reports of “tentative diplomatic contacts” between Pyongyang and Tokyo, [International Crisis Group senior Korean Peninsula consultant Christopher] Green said the decision to effectively uninvite the Japan soccer team may be a “visible manifestation” of how talks are going.
While the game being called off probably came as a relief to the JFA, who got to avoid the logistical nightmare of getting an entire team in and out of North Korea, it still came at a cost to more than 20 Japanese journalists who had been approved to make the trip. Masafumi Mori, one of a handful of writers who attended the November 2011 game in Pyongyang, wrote that he was out over $1,200 as a result of the cancellation (and I tweeted a thread summarizing his column and the Kafka-esque paperwork hell he faced preparing for the trip).
3. Takerufuji makes history
Records are made to be broken in sports — even sports with histories dating back hundreds of years.
Nine times out of 10, the Osaka Basho might have become yet another grand tournament marked by the withdrawal of an injured yokozuna (Terunofuji, who went 2-5-8) and unsteady performances by two rikishi (the 5-10 Kirishima and 8-6-1 Takakeisho).
But this time around we got Takerufuji, who became the first newly minted maegashira in 110 years to win the title in his top-division debut.
The Aomori native’s 13-2 record was all the more impressive considering he went into Sunday’s finale at Osaka’s Edion Arena with an ankle injury suffered the previous day — and still got it done with a fierce win over Gonoyama.
Not only did Takerufuji accomplish something not seen since the Taisho era, but he set a record of his own, having won the Emperor’s Cup just 10 tournaments after debuting in the ring.
4. Power play
Japanese baseball stadiums are famous for the swarm of young female beer vendors, known as uriko, who scale the concrete steps dozens of times every night to quench the thirst of thousands of fans.
Now they have a new companion — the… denchi-ko?
Ahead of the NPB season’s launch this weekend, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden EAgles have announced a collaboration with Anker, a manufacturer of speakers, chargers and other electronic accessories, that will bring vendors selling mobile phone chargers to Rakuten Mobile Park Miyagi.
While this is absolutely going to go in the WaCkY JaPaN file, the backpack plug has completely won me over — and though the power packs come with a typical stadium markup (¥4,980/$33, compared to the ¥3,490/$23 cost on Amazon), they do come with Eagles-branded pouches, and I can imagine this service being a lifesaver to fans who suddenly find themselves with a dead phone.
5. Eddie makes his case
This one is from a couple weeks ago, but I had a chance to catch Brave Blossoms head coach Eddie Jones’ press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, where he talked about how Japanese rugby has changed since his first stint with the team and what he hopes to accomplish in the 2027 RWC cycle.
On Japan Rugby League One’s reliance on foreigners:
The establishment of League One is fantastic for Japanese rugby, but it comes at a cost. Only 53% of playing time is played by Japanese players. That means selection-wise we’re only picking 53% of the playing population. The challenge is to create better Japanese players. If there are better Japanese players, they’ll get picked.
On what needs changing:
We need to almost renew the structure of Japanese rugby as much as we can, and then we need to go back to Japanese rugby. We can be collectively faster than the opposition. What we’re talking about isn’t only individual speed and decision-making, but team decision-making. Japan has a history of showing they can do that better than anyone.
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Japanese players can give you more than anyone in the world, because they buy into that concept of harmony and doing things together, and being the toughest players in the world. We need to build this collective fast playing style, who can break the plateau of the moment and move into the top four in the world.
On the Rugby Championship:
I think ultimately you’d like Japan playing in the Rugby Championship. That would be the ideal situation, (playing) New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, (and) Australia frequently. The only way to get better is playing above yourself. I know there have been preliminary discussions, but it’s still a long way from being.
And last but not least, on whether Japan needs to get back into Super Rugby:
I can’t see Super Rugby being a part of Japanese rugby for the foreseeable future. The quality of League One is as close as you can get to Super Rugby. Maybe the cross-border tournaments can be something that adds a little more, particularly for those sides that don’t make the semifinals.
6. Kaori Sakamoto did some queen shit
That’s it, that’s the item.
But seriously, I was with my parents during the last few days of their trip and didn’t get a chance to catch the 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal, where Kaori Sakamoto clinched her third straight world title with this incredible free skate after ending the short program in fourth place.
The Kobe native was the only Japanese skater to defend her world title from Saitama 2023; Shoma Uno finished fourth in men’s singles (with Yuma Kagiyama taking second behind human helicopter blade Ilia Malinin), while Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara took second in pairs behind Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps despite finishing first in the free.
Next year’s worlds will be in Boston, my old stomping grounds when I went to college across the state. Kind of tempting, not gonna lie!
7. The taxman cometh
It’s been almost a year since Andres Iniesta left Vissel Kobe, who paid him an absurd amount of money annually (roughly $30 million/season) to not win titles, to go play for a UAE club who are also probably giving him an absurd amount of money to not win titles.
But some of that money, at least for now, belongs to the Osaka Regional Taxation Bureau after they collected $3.8 million in back taxes that the former Barcelona star didn’t pay because he only arrived in Japan midway through the 2018 season.
In a statement issued to Japanese media, Iniesta said that he had filed taxes in Spain and that he was being double-taxed as a result, adding that he hoped he would eventually have the money returned.
The Spaniard is the biggest name yet to be attached to an investigation that first came to light in November, when J.League clubs were cautioned over the filing of taxes for foreign players.
At issue are tax rates as high as 55% for residents of Japan compared to 20% for non-residents — which in the past led a number of Japanese sports clubs to sign players to contracts lasting less than one year in order to report those players as non-residents and reduce their tax burdens.
There had been some speculation — seemingly unfounded, in retrospect — that this would scare some clubs off from foreign signings, as J.League clubs traditionally pay their players’ tax bills.
8. Island vibes
A Japanese wrestler is helping Samoan wrestling reach the Olympics — on and off the mat.
Gaku Akazawa, who naturalized late last year after relocating to the Pacific nation in 2017, won gold in the 65-kg freestyle division at the recent African-Oceania Championships in Egypt, qualifying for the Paris Games in the process.
The 34-year-old Nihon University graduate also serves as head coach for Samoa’s wrestling program.
And this is hardly the first time we’ve heard a story like this in the last year — former Jacksonville Jaguars employee Amit Patel stole $22 million from that team, basically four times what Mizuhara allegedly took from Ohtani!