Team Japan are ready for the 13th World Championship. 20 fighters in the men’s category and 9 in the women’s category. The level are as always extremely high, proven to be among the best in the World.
To hold a respectable World Championship, several components must be in order. One of the components would be (of course) large strong teams who can challenge everyone. Japan – whiteout doubt, does have a large and a strong team – so, can the challenge everyone?
Shota Maeda made a comeback this 8th All japan Open
Qualifying trough the Japanese “system” means that one have to be in the top of the Japanese league, meaning capture top spots in the All Japan Open (Open weight category held in Autumn) or the All Japan Open JFKO weight category held every Spring.
The level in these tournaments are sky high, and when you see the line up and counting in the two head factors:1.Number of athletes 2. Meritorious athletes. The list of notable fighters are solid and the number of fighters (even in the weight category All Japan Open) are huge, comparing to the European scale.
No problem with recruitment, over 3,000 performers in the Dream Festival
It is normal for a category in Japan to be as big as all the categories put together in the biggest European championships as WKO, IKO or WKB (counting seniors athletes EC 2023) Meaning that a JFKO men category can hold 70-100 fighters, depend which category one look into.
As Full Contact karate has developed, you can see that it is not just weight alone that determines the outcome. Technically, a lot has happened and that also applies when it comes to how the athletes train. Faster, more mobile, more technical, more all-round compared to yesterday’s fighters where size and weight alone were more important.
Fighters Team Japan men:
- Kembu Iriki
- Yuto Goto
- Takashi Torihara
- Yusaku Watanabe
- Nariyoshi Tada
- Shota Maeda
- Kaede Hiraki
- Tenshin Sawai
- Shin Kameyama
- Daiki Kato
- Kosei Ochiai
- Yuki Okada
- Kazushi Watanabe
- Yuto Eguchi
- Hotaka Yoshizawa
- Ryuki Ushirosako
- Ryuji Toda
- Yota Kaneoka
- Yuki Otsubo
- Shoki Furumoto
In the women’s division, 9 fighters are ready from Japan. In this division have Japan been challenge very hard, and two times have fighters from Europe taken the World title.(2007 – Veronika Szövetes and Csenge Szepesi in 2015)
- Mihiro Suzuki
- Chihiro Kubota
- Kokona Nomura
- Reimi Asako
- Ren Mizutani
- Yuno Shimizu
- Airi Han
- Yuna Mokudai
- Hika Tomimura
