I was very hesitant about the opportunity to write this blog post, above all for the fear of being misunderstood. Yet I consider it necessary, even after some time after an episode that should have been insignificant, which for a few days was seen as very significant, and which now seemed to have disappeared into thin air. But it didn’t, actually.
It’s been almost two years since Hanyu-san turned professional. Hanyu-san, not Yuzu. When I speak as a fan, I use the diminutive of the name. In other moments I prefer to use the surname. Hanyu-san has turned professional. We all remember his tension, which was ours too. He was afraid of losing us, he feared that we were only interested in the competitions, only in the medals. We were afraid of losing him, we were afraid that we would never have the opportunity to see him again.
Two years ago on August 7th, Hanyu-san started his YouTube channel. A video of just over a minute, just him wearing his regular practice clothes, in front of a white wall, saying a few sentences in Japanese. Was he embarrassed? Was he afraid of our reaction? He didn’t know how to relate to us? The last competition he participated in was still an open wound. He certainly feared he had disappointed us.
Two days later the second video arrived, still only in Japanese, but there was something more, and not just in the length, over five minutes. This time he wasn’t in front of a white wall of unknown location, he was at Sendai Ice Rink, and interspersed with his words there were images that everyone, even those who don’t know Japanese, could appreciate: three jumps and a spin. That day he thanked us for a higher number of subscriptions to the channel than what he expected, and that from people from all over the world, not only from Japan. And he made an appointment for the next day with SharePractice. He seemed a little embarrassed, partly because of the amount of registrations and messages he received, and partly, probably, because he was wondering whether he would live up to our expectations. He will always ask this to himself, it’s what pushes him to improve, and to give us extraordinary programs and shows.
We appreciated the SharePractice to the point of asking for another one. Maybe he will do it, maybe he won’t. It depends on many things, there may be insurmountable organizational difficulties. If he will do it, I assume everyone who can will tune in to watch it. If not, we will still have other opportunities to admire his skating. That day, towards the end of the stream of SharePractice, Hanyu-san stopped to read through our comments in the live chat on his phone. He wanted to read them, but in reality he couldn’t keep up with the speed at which they scrolled, because there were over 100,000 of us connected, and we wrote a lot. He asked us what program we would like to see at the end of the practice. I didn’t understand his words, I needed the translation, but he asked the fans a question, he wanted to listen to the voice of the fans.
The third video, the one in which Hanyu-san announced Prologue, contains English subtitles. He saw that there are many of us who follow him even outside Japan, he did his best to communicate with us too. And for Prologue he asked us to tell him which programs we would like to see him perform. He was again interested in the voice of the fandom. The fourth program after Seimei, Change, and the program chosen by the audience present in the arena using the luminous bracelets was the one requested by the fans on YouTube the most. I don’t know how many programs we requested and whether he, or someone for him, counted which programs received the most votes. But for him our opinion was important. Just like our presence.
I wasn’t in the arena. I wanted to be there, but organizing a trip to Japan is not that simple. But seeing how many people were there for him moved me too. He feared that the transition from Hanyu-senshu to Hanyu-san would lead to disinterest on the part of the public. It didn’t happen, and that’s important. It was the warmth of the public, of those who supported him in the arenas and of those who supported him from afar, that helped him heal from the wounds of Beijing and of recent years. And little by little he opened himself up to the fans. We all see it in the encores at the end of the shows. Now he has a greater reserve of energy, true. He has done very intense training, and that allowed him to skate better, to arrive at the end less tired, but it’s not just that. Our warmth gives him strength. He likes to communicate with us, the fans, the audience. He saw that we always remained by his side, even in difficult moments, when Japanese tabloids made his life very difficult with their intrusiveness and their shameful insinuations, even when in Saga he skated in a way that could not leave him satisfied. We see how he lights up when he skates around the arena and looks at the audience, how he draws strength from everyone around him. Hanyu-san, Hanyu-senshu, Hanyu-sama, Yuzu, gives us so much, and we do our best to reciprocate. What I think not everyone has understood is that we should take another step, leaving him the freedom to do what he wants, without having to justify himself or apologize for it.
Last month I wrote a message under one of his videos. Nothing strange, I’ve written quite a few messages in his channel before. The strange thing is that I received the notification that he had liked that message. Within two days Hanyu-san wrote another message in which he explained that he had put that like there by mistake, because while he was looking at the page, his finger slipped.
Hanyu-san’s explanation made me sad. Not for me, for him. I wrote a single tweet to report Hanyu-san’s like, because in my opinion it was an important thing for the community. My message, the one about that like, was a suggestion on how to manage the translation. What he is doing is both tiring and time-consuming, and as much as I like having the videos with subtitles, I prefer him to rest. There are enough translators in the fandom that I know I can read a translation of his words in no time.
In his last video Yuzu had asked us for help. He wanted to communicate with everyone, he explained his difficulties and asked for our opinion. And I gave mine, as a member of the community, and supported by the community, since I publicly asked for help on Twitter. Many people read my explanations and decided to put the like I asked for. When Yuzu’s involuntary like arrived, I let the community know that our message had reached its destination. Ours, in plural. It was something important to all of us. For me the episode ended there. Many celebrated that like, the prevailing feeling I saw was joy. However, some had very different emotions.
I have no idea what Hanyu-san saw of the social media reactions. I received some messages telling me to delete my tweet, and I saw some messages from someone who was badmouthing me behind my back. Not many, although someone said to me that there were many more. But for me it was a closed episode by then. Yuzu asked for our suggestion, I wrote down a possible solution, several fanyu helped me make the proposal more visible, he gave a sign of acceptance, I informed the other fanyu that we succeeded, case closed.
But unexpectedly, Hanyu-san posted another message. He wrote that he liked my message by mistake. He apologized for making a mistake, and he said that if it were to happen again, it would be a mistake again, asking the fandom to take it as such right away. And my reaction was: “but is it a joke?” I was incredulous.
I read some comments under that Hanyu-san’s message. Not Yuzu, as I wrote in some places above, but Hanyu-san. The one who asked the fans for help was Yuzu. The person who wrote that fans are all equal was Hanyu-san. Some fans celebrated for his affirmation. Why, didn’t they know? It doesn’t matter whether we have followed him for a long time, and have shared many emotions with him, or if we have arrived in a dark moment, giving him with our mere presence, our unconditional love, the strength to overcome difficulties. In Continues with Wings his eyes lit up when he felt that someone had supported him since he was competing among the Novices, but the fans who arrived in Beijing, who made him understand that what he did in those days was extraordinary, were equally important, and so are the fans of the professional era, because they were telling him that the competitions were not the only thing that mattered. We are all equal in that sense: Japanese, with whom he can relax because they understand his words in context and don’t need many explanations, and non-Japanese, who, despite the language and cultural barriers do their best to overcome and support him. We are all equal. And it’s not like he has a fondness for a particular fan when he stops to look at their banner. It’s not that he skated Hello, I Love You in Prologue, because he prefers the fans who suggested that program to him more, than those who suggested to skate Origin. When he said he loved fanart, he wasn’t saying he loved fans who make fanart more than those who don’t. I thought it was clear to everyone, and with the likes of some comments on his channel it should be the same. It’s not the sign of favoritism, but a form of communication. Hanyu-san’s message made me sad, because it told us that he is not free to do what he wants. No, he has to adjust himself to satisfy the expectations of millions of strangers, even if those expectations are unreasonable.
We are not his friends. His friends are the people he knows in real life. We are different. We are important because we give him a reason to continue to do his art, but we are important from afar, with the distance that exists between the artist and those who admire his art. But it would be nice if he could relax with us. There will always be a distance between us, but we have seen the transition from the emotional, but all in all composed greetings in Prologue to the dance for I’m invincible at the end of the Re_Pray tour. Hanyu-san broke up with us and became Yuzu. He welcomed the warmth of those who were present in the arena but also from those who were far away, like me, because we are the reason he made live broadcasts, live viewings and livestreams of his shows available. It is because there are many of us who loves what he does, and he used our warmth for a last dance. He wanted to be with us as much as possible. At that moment he wasn’t the artist performing a show, he was the man satisfied with his own work, enjoying sharing his feelings.
It’s reasonable that Hanyu-san decided not to stop to sign autographs. Would he dare to do so we would flock en masse, and he wouldn’t be able to leave. When he celebrated his birthday in the Metaverse, did he chat with any of us? Not that we know of. If he did, it wasn’t with me, I didn’t chat with anyone. But I wonder whether he engaged with anyone, protected by the anonymity of his avatar. I wish it to be true, that Yuzu was able to relax a little, without being a public figure and just interact. And in the same way I would like Yuzu to be able to give as many likes as he wants. A like from him shouldn’t change anything in the general rule, that every fan is treated equally. Giving a like is not favoritism. It’s a form of communication and even if he gives it to only one comment, it is by default, a message to the entire fandom. If he wants to relax a bit by reading some comments, and decides to do such a trivial thing like giving a like, he must be able to do it without causing a drama among his fans. He must be able to give even 20 likes to the same person if he feels like it. He should be able to use an object given to him by a fan in public without being accused of favoritism. As long as he can’t act freely as he wishes, he will stay Hanyu-san for us too, the public figure who can never relax, and that’s what makes me really sad.
