Recently Yuzuru Hanyu has been the victim of a shameful attack by the tabloids. For months unscrupulous people, often hiding in anonymity, have thrown mud at a man who is a treasure for his country, and I’m not speaking in a figurative sense. In 2018 he was awarded the People Honor ‘s Award because he ‘gave dreams and thrills to the people and hope and courage to society.’
https://olympics.com/en/news/yuzuru-hanyu-set-for-top-japanese-honour
If his performances, his numerous successes, his ability to get up after every fall, after every injury, are extraordinary, alongside the athlete there is the man. The man who knows what it means to be afraid, to see your world collapse, to feel helpless, and to receive help. He found himself on one side of this relationship, that of someone who needed help, and as soon as he could he moved to the other, that of someone who gives help. He has not forgotten, and does what he can to help others. The Wikipedia section on what he is doing for others, and not just for the inhabitants of Tōhoku, is very long:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzuru_Hanyu#Philanthropy
And even when what he does is for himself, because he loves skating, and loves contact with the public, what he does is important for people’s lives. He is important on an emotional level, and it is important on a material level.
According to Yamaguchi University, the economic impact of Hanyu’s first year as a professional linked to the shows in which he skated, advertising and the publishing world, is estimated at 17.6 billion yen:
https://www.tokyo-sports.co.jp/articles/-/270082
How many people worked thanks to him? How many people have made a living? In December 2023, amid the tabloid defamation campaign, Hanyu held two shows in Saga, with an economic impact on the entire prefecture estimated at 482 million yen:
https://www.pref.saga.lg.jp/kiji003101210/index.html
I personally know several people who left Italy to attend one or more stages of the Re_Pray tour live. And I’ve read about people doing it from other parts of the world. According to Hanyu, on the last day in Rifu there were people from around thirty different nations. People who spent their money on plane tickets. And who then spent their money to sleep in Japan, to eat in Japan, to move around Japan, and certainly also to buy some items in Japan to take home upon their return. I didn’t do it, an Italy-Japan trip is demanding, both on an organizational and economic level. Which means I bought the ticket to watch GIFT on GlobeCoding, and then the four tickets of RE_PRAY (+ archive) on Beyond_LIVE. In my own small way, I also contributed to the success of the shows, and therefore to the economy of Japan.
And I made several purchases. If we talk about merchandising we are talking about two T-shirt, a hoodie, two tote bags and a keychain from Prologue, a neckwarmer and a T-shirt from RE_PRAY, all the official books. For DVD, I still have to figure out if there are subtitles, because this is a fundamental difference, especially for the GIFT one. I bought the DVD of Notte stellata, a T-shirt and a pair of gloves, and there are other things like the backpack that I’m trying to buy. It’s not easy, navigating Japanese sites is challenging, it often seems that Japan doesn’t want the money of non-Japanese people, so maybe I’ll be able to buy something else, maybe not. But I have spent a lot of money in Japan, even though I have never been there.
Recently I have published a series of messages on X with the hashtags #羽生結弦 #HanyuBooks #TeamYuzu. All those messages contained a photo, almost always of books, sometimes of other things somehow connected to Hanyu. If I haven’t forgotten any, there are 46 Japanese books and magazines dedicated entirely (almost entirely) or partially (three) to Hanyu. Plus I ordered two that have yet to arrive, also because they haven’t been published yet. The Japanese publishing industry lives thanks to Hanyu. I’m not saying that books or newspapers wouldn’t exist if he wasn’t there, but how much lower would the earnings of so many people, photographers, publishers (with all the people who work for them), printers, sellers, shippers, be if Hanyu wasn’t there? Thanks to Hanyu, the publishing industry is supported by the Japanese and by all those people who, like me, don’t care about the additional costs for an intercontinental shipment. We are contributing enormously to the Japanese publishing industry. And apart from the books there are DVDs, I bought three of them (Time of Awakening, Time of Evolution, Notte stellata), the Prologue one I will definitely buy, for the GIFT one, as mentioned, it depends on the presence of subtitles. And three calendars.
Leaving Japanese books, moving on to Italian or English books, between printed books and ebooks, I read about forty books on Japan, some written by Japanese authors, because I wanted to learn more about the culture in which Hanyu was educated and in which he lives. Hanyu made me want to discover Japan. If that’s not being an ambassador for his culture to the world, I don’t know what is. I have read about twenty literary works by Japanese authors. In translation, of course, but those authors have gained something from me. I bought the Onmyoji I and II DVDs. And I know I’m not the only one who buys books or merchandise, as I know of people who go to Japan, or who have started lessons of Japanese.
What Hanyu is doing is extraordinary. His impact on the lives of many people is enormous. And, despite this, the tabloids have been carrying out an absurd defamation campaign based on nothing for months, demonstrating such great intellectual and moral paucity that I have no words to define it. I had a better image of Japan, but apparently in all places for an extraordinary person like Hanyu there are a remarkable amount of people who enjoy rolling in garbage, going so far as to create it themselves if they can’t find it. I hope that Japan understands that it has to pass specific laws to eliminate all this rubbish that ends up being printed on paper, for Hanyu and all the other numerous innocent victims of the tabloids.
