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The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar
Kanoa Igarashi, Japan’s most famous wave rider. (Source: Kanoa Igarashi/Instagram)

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The September sun was starting to set over Tokyo—prime surfing hours at the beaches in nearby Shonan—when Kanoa Igarashi, Japan’s most famous wave rider, dragged himself and his entourage into the Harajuku showroom of Quiksilver Inc., one of his sponsors.

It had been a whirlwind 48-hour promotional blitz. He’d flown 5,000 miles from Surf Ranch, the mechanical wave pool that Kelly Slater built in Southern California’s inland valley, where Igarashi had spent nine hours getting filmed carving one perfect, machine-made tube after another, then having his blood tested for lactic acid levels.

After touching down in Tokyo at 5 a.m., he climbed into a black SUV headed toward the Prince Park Tower Hotel, where, by 11 a.m., he’d already done a half-dozen interviews with Japanese media. Then there was a photo shoot for GQ and a press conference to announce his latest endorsement deal, with cosmetics maker Shiseido Co.

When he arrived at Quiksilver, he was only slightly behind schedule and still looking unruffled in a black T-shirt, black pants, and white sneakers and sporting bleached-blond hair. Igarashi would spend two more hours signing T-shirts and posters and posing for yet more photos. Off to one side was a 6-foot-tall, life-size cardboard cutout of him, equally bronzed and impossibly fit.

“There’s a lot of athletic, gifted surfers but not many as driven as Kanoa,” says Derek Rielly, co-founder of the surf website BeachGrit. “He seems to love all the machinations around pro surfing—the companies, the people, the attention, the cameras. He thrives off it.”

The sport of surfing is all about timing, and with the possible exception of Slater, nobody ever timed it better than Igarashi’s surf-crazed parents, Tsutomu and Misa. Twenty-four years ago, the couple quit their jobs in Tokyo and moved across the Pacific to Huntington Beach, Surf City USA, with the goal of having a baby and raising him or her to be a champion. That California kid grew up to be the youngest surfer to make the professional tour. Now, ranked No. 6 in the world and with earnings of almost $2 million last year, he’s one of the sport’s highest-paid athletes.

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

Comparisons are inevitable with tennis prodigies Serena and Venus Williams, whose father, Richard, saw how much money was being handed out to the winner of a tennis match on television and drafted a 78-page plan to turn his yet-to-be-conceived daughters into stars. But Tsutomu, or Tom, still gives off a bohemian vibe, with a long ponytail and thick-rimmed glasses that he sometimes wears around his neck. He introduces himself with jokey business cards, the latest of which describes him as head of the California Research Center, a serious-sounding institution that doesn’t exist.

His real business, of course, is managing his son’s career, which he’s done since he would wake him by 5:20 every morning as a small child so he could be surfing waves by 5:45. (He’d time the sessions so his son could still make it to school on time—second grade.) By age 7, Igarashi had won his first trophy, and he was outsurfing his father by his early teens. In 2016 an 18-year-old Igarashi became the youngest rookie, as well as the first surfer to formally represent Japan on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour. He won the Vans U.S. Open in 2017 and 2018, and last year he broke into the WSL’s top 10. In May he scored his first Championship Tour victory, at Keramas Beach in Bali.

Perhaps the most fortuitous timing of all came when the Olympic committee decided to include surfing in the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and selected a beach break in Chiba prefecture that Igarashi’s father surfed endlessly as a young man. With a home-field advantage and his father’s inside track on the surf, Igarashi should have a clear edge.

“Out of every surfer, I have the best chance,” he told me in a quiet moment when we met up for the first time earlier this year. “It shouldn’t be me saying it, but just to be direct with you: With everything combined, with it being in Japan, with the rise-up I’m having, I have the best chance of winning the Olympics.”

Although he was born and raised in the U.S., Igarashi chose to seek qualification for the games under the Japanese flag. He says it was a way to honor his parents, but it was also an easy business decision. For all of surfing’s popularity in Japan—the islands have 18,500 miles of coastline, consistent waves, and, during the fall typhoon season, swells that can rival the best on Earth—he’s really the country’s only surf star.

“In California everyone lives next door to a pro surfer,” says Tanner Carney, Igarashi’s friend and videographer. “But in Japan, he’s it. He’s the guy.”

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar
The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but there are an estimated 2 million surfers out of the 126 million people living in Japan. (The U.S. counts approximately 2.5 million out of a population of 330 million.) Many are concentrated in Kamakura, where “train surfers” who work in Tokyo will take the hourlong ride to hit the water. According to data from Surfline, the most popular online wave resource, there’s been a 22% increase in new users from Japan since 2017.

After the Olympics announcement, much of the focus has been on Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach in the town of Ichinomiya (population 500), where the competition will be held. It’s 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, and almost 600,000 visitors surf there every year. The waves are consistent but not historically big ones—which just happens to be Igarashi’s specialty, according to Matt Warshaw, author of the Encyclopedia of Surfing. He anticipates that the conditions there will be at best a 2- to 3-foot surf. “On the other hand,” he says, “really bad 2-feet surf is where Kanoa Igarashi is almost unbeatable.”

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

Shuji Kasuya, a former Japanese surf champion who lives in Honolulu, says Igarashi has the potential to transcend the sport in his home country. “He’s the first Japanese on the Championship Tour, so there’s so much influence not just as a surfer. It’s more like he’s always on the news, advertisements, commercials,” says Kasuya. “He doesn’t just do surfing fan magazines, he does fashion magazines. It used to be surfers had long hair and a bad-boy image. But he’s clean-cut and speaks like four different languages.”

For the moment, Igarashi stands alone in terms of broader fame in surfing-mad Japan. He says he’s already “way past” last year’s $2 million figure, mostly because of endorsement deals related to the Olympics. Corporate sponsors range from Visa Inc., which has been running an ad on Japanese TV since March that depicts Igarashi riding his surfboard on a wave of the company’s cash cards, to a conglomerate called the Kinoshita Group, which makes building materials and operates nursing homes.

A few other potential stars are coming up behind him. Shun Murakami, a goofy-footed 22-year-old, has already earned a provisional qualification for the Olympics. Closer to home, Igarashi’s younger brother, Keanu, is also being groomed for surf stardom, and after winning a few amateur contests at the age of 17, he could end up being the Serena to the Igarashis’ Venus.

At the Quiksilver shop in Harajuku, however, there was no evidence of those kinds of thoughts. Igarashi was due the next day on the beaches at Miyazaki, a 90-minute flight from Tokyo, where he would compete in the ISA World Surfing Games. After that, he’d go back to Slater’s wave pool for the Freshwater Pro tournament.

One last bit of business remained: Igarashi’s father was in another room planning a documentary about the family with Japanese TV producers. Afterward, Igarashi, his father, and Carney, all three dressed in black, rode the elevator down to the street. As they headed out into Harajuku’s neon-lit night to do some shopping, I was reminded of something Tsutomu told me earlier. “My wife and I were making something,” he said. “And we succeeded.”

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

The Secrets to Surfing in Japan

BEACHES TO KNOW

Near Tokyo is Hebara Beach in Katsuura. “It’s often referred to as the ‘Swell Magnet’ or the ‘Jewel in the Chiba Crown’ due to the vast array of breaks and swell directions caused by varying winds,” says Dane Gillett, who owns Splash Guest House. Thirty minutes north by train is Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach, where the Olympics are being held. It’s known for having consistent waves because of the shape of the sea bed, but in general they hover in the 2- to 3-foot range. Kamakura, an hourlong train ride from Tokyo, sits in the shadow of Mount Fuji, but it can get crowded. Morgan Collett, co-founder of surf-inspired fashion label Saturdays NYC, recommends the Kaifu River in Shikoku, a five-hour drive from Tokyo, for the waves that form where the river meets the sea.

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

WHERE TO STAY

There aren’t many four- and five-star resorts in Japan, much less in remote surfing destinations. But in Ago Bay in Mie prefecture is Amanemu, which Aman Resorts Group Ltd. manages. It offers a private onsen (hot spring) in every villa as well as natural ones on the property. Surf nearby at Ago-no-Matsubara Beach, where swells are strong and consistent. Halekulani Okinawa, a resort wrapped around a white sand beach on a secluded peninsula, opened in August. Key spots include the Sunabe Seawall, known for its reef breaks, and Aha Point. The travel specialists at Inside Japan Tours, meanwhile, recommend Iwamotoro Ryokan located on the picturesque island of Enoshima just outside Kamakura. All rooms are sea-facing and enjoy spectacular views of Sagamiwan Bay, Mount Oyama, and the Hakone mountain range but the real treat is the unique baths: one Roman-style one comes with stained-glass windows; another is in a cave. In Miyazaki, the  Sheraton Grande Ocean Resort is surrounded by historic black pine groves on a 2.7-square mile property.

The Non-Stop, Endorsement-Packed Life of Japan’s Surfing Superstar

GEAR TO GET

Japanese neoprene, a rubber made from limestone extracted from the mountains, is the wetsuit gold standard. It’s more buoyant, durable, and flexible; both Patagonia Inc. and Nineplus Inc. use it. Surf journalist Chas Smith got fitted for a Rash wetsuit on a trip and says, “It was more intense than getting a tailored suit.” Glidz Japan has developed a premium neoprene called Fiber-Light for its custom wetsuits, handmade in a workshop in Chiba. Stock suits take 12 days to make and are almost $500, so expect custom ones to run more than that.

SHAPER TO SWEAR BY

Like guitar makers, surfboard shapers are integral to good performance, and there are several legendary ones in Japan. Among them: Masao Ogawa of Dick Brewer Surfboards and YU surfboards’ Yoshinori Ueda, who’s worked with Gerry Lopez, aka Mr. Pipeline, arguably the best-known shaper in the world. Rio Ueda, Yoshi’s son, has also gone into the family business; find him on Instagram @rioueda_. His boards come in various shapes (long, quad, twin fins) and are often embellished with swirling abstract colors.

--With assistance from Maxwell Williams.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net, James Gaddy

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.