Professional figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu marked the fourth anniversary of turning professional on July 19. To commemorate this milestone for an athlete who continues to evolve, Sports Hochi presents a special three-part interview series.
Source: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3 (machine translated)
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Part 1:
Hanyu has always charged ahead at full speed. That was true not only after turning professional, but throughout his competitive career as well. From moving up to the senior ranks in 2010, he spent twelve consecutive seasons pushing forward without pause.
Then, in August of last year, his fourth year as a professional, he made the decision to set aside a period for maintenance. Those months were spent focusing on his body, studying dance and biomechanics, and expanding his range of expression.
“For the first time, I took what you could call a maintenance period, and I feel like my body has been renewed. During my competitive years, after the Olympics, and even after turning professional, I’d just kept charging ahead. As I underwent various examinations and had people assess my physical condition, I realized that I’d really been walking a tightrope all this time. I had somehow managed to keep myself going, but now I feel that I’ve been able to restore my body to a better condition. In that sense, I think the biggest change in my fourth year was in terms of my physical condition.”
At his solo show “REALIVE” in April, for which he served as both performer and executive producer, Hanyu described his current state, saying, “I feel like I’m going through a period of rapid change right now.”
“That could apply to both my expression and my skating. There was a period when I couldn’t skate, and during that time I worked incredibly hard on dance training. Through studying dance in various ways, I naturally came into contact with many different forms of expression.”
“Up until now, I think I had tended to view dance-based programs like ‘Mass Destruction’ and figure skating programs as separate things. But rather than thinking, ‘This part has to be done this way,’ I’ve come to feel that ‘everything comes together to form one unified physical expression.’ I think that has been one of the changes in my approach to expression. After going through the maintenance period, I have been rebuilding myself from the ground up, so even the inner aspects of my body such as muscle strength and sense of balance have been changing in many ways. I feel like I’m still right in the middle of a major transformation.”
The drive for improvement of this two-time Olympic gold medalist shows no signs of fading. Since turning professional, he has continued to take on new challenges, including devoting time to learning various forms of dance. What is surprising is that he says he often finds himself realizing, “I’m not capable of doing as much as I thought.”
“When I watch my own performances, I keep thinking, ‘I’m terrible.’”
When asked again, “Even now?” he answered immediately.
“Of course, of course. I’m constantly thinking, ‘Wow, this is bad,’ and ‘That’s bad too.’ There’s so much room for improvement.”
He is fiercely competitive. He is someone who can continue to devote himself to endless effort in order to elevate his skating. That is precisely one of his strengths as an athlete, and one of the reasons Yuzuru Hanyu draws people in. Without ever being satisfied with where he is, he has believed in his own potential and continued to break new ground.
“I just live ordinarily as myself, carrying various expectations and wanting to answer them. I simply go through each day thinking, ‘It would be harder for me if I couldn’t meet those expectations.’ I feel like I have no choice but to become someone who can’t just say, ‘I’ve reached my limit.’ If I were to decide for myself, ‘I can’t go any further,’ I think that moment would probably come immediately once I made that decision.”
Hanyu explained this by comparing his everyday life with figure skating.
“For example, when you think, ‘Maybe I don’t need to work any more today,’ or ‘Maybe I don’t need to try any harder today,’ there are things that you can stop doing anytime if you decide to stop, right? Figure skating is the same. It isn’t something that is essential for survival, and it’s not something I’m doing because someone else has set my schedule for me. In the end, it’s an extension of something like a hobby or a lesson I’ve chosen to pursue. So, if I chose to set a limit for myself, I could do so at any point. But I believe that continuing without setting that limit, continuing while telling myself, ‘This isn’t my limit,’ is also one form of effort. I want to be that kind of person. I want to be a skater who makes people feel that my value is always truly there.”
Surely, from here on as well, Yuzuru Hanyu will continue to be “Yuzuru Hanyu.”
“I think I’ve come to realize that this is simply the only way I can live. It’s not that someone forced me into this way of life. It’s just that, because of my own personality, I can’t live any other way. I think I keep striving because I don’t want to become someone who does things halfway.”
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Part 2:
On July 19, four years ago, Hanyu held a press conference in Tokyo to announce his decision to turn professional. Does the person he is today resemble the image he had of himself back then, or is it something different?
“I wouldn't say I really imagined it; rather, I couldn't imagine it. At the press conference, I was constantly fighting with the fear of, ‘Will people really continue to watch me from here on?’ At the time, I had this fear that people watched me because I was still a competitive athlete, but once I became a professional, they might not watch me anymore. Because I was afraid, I didn't even know what kind of person I should become, or what kind of skating I needed to pursue in order to remain a skater whom people would continue to have expectations for and want to watch. I remember that time as being very frightening.”
His challenge of creating solo shows has changed the very concept of what a professional skater can be. His self-created “ICE STORY” productions—where he takes charge of planning, scripting, performing, and serving as executive producer—have been huge successes with “GIFT,” “RE_PRAY,” and “Echoes of Life.” Each time, tickets have become highly sought after, and venues continue to be filled with sold-out crowds.
“In that sense, the person I am now is completely different from what I imagined back then, or perhaps I became someone I could never have imagined. The fact that everyone finds value in the skating I do now, and comes to watch because they want to see this skating; the fact that I have been able to become that kind of skater is probably the best thing of all. I think that was the kind of person I hoped to become back then. I'm still far from satisfied with my abilities, and there are certainly many things I haven't yet been able to fully express or embody in the way I want to. Even so, the fact that people want to see the Yuzuru Hanyu of today and look forward to my new works, and that I can remain a figure skater whom people feel that way about even after becoming a professional, is truly an honor. It's something that makes me very happy, and something I feel very fortunate to experience.”
By taking on the role of executive producer for his “ICE STORY” productions, Hanyu says he has become able to see Yuzuru Hanyu the skater from multiple perspectives. How exactly does he see himself?
“When I'm in charge of production direction, I'm just a ‘piece’ (laughs). I feel like I'm stepping so far outside myself that I can think things like, ‘I should have this guy do this kind of thing.’ I feel somewhat the same way when I'm creating choreography. Of course, I put in everything I want to express, and I value the movements that suddenly come to me the moment I hear the music. However, I have to think about choreography that is meant to reach someone, not just choreography for my own satisfaction. When I do that, there is also a part of me that creates from a very distant perspective, thinking things like, ‘I should properly show this side of him,’ or, ‘This is what is good about this guy, so I should make him do it this way.’”
Yuzuru Hanyu treating himself as a “piece.” Truly fascinating.
“Because it's me, I can be rough with myself (laughs). If I were creating choreography for someone else, or producing someone else's ice show, I don't think I could do this. It's precisely because it's myself that I can keep pushing myself beyond my limits. There are times when I try something and realize, ‘I really can't do this,’ but then I can still tell myself, ‘This is what I want to show, so see it through.’ I think that, in itself, becomes one of the things that helps me keep improving and expand my current abilities. I believe that people need constraints in order to grow. In that sense, I think that this has become a good kind of constraint for me.”
Hanyu said, “Rather than creating choreography for my own satisfaction, I have to create choreography that reaches someone.” Does he ever put choreography into a work exactly as he feels it, simply letting his emotions guide him?
Hanyu smiled and quietly shook his head.
“I calculate everything very carefully. When I create my own choreography, it usually goes through about three stages each time. At first, I create it in a burst, to the point where I can't even remember all the movements. But I can't skate through it like that. I end up making it so dense that I can only skate each section separately. That is what you could call choreography that hasn't been calculated, the movements that come out exactly as they are. Then I connect those movements together, put together a rough version for the time being, edit it through video, and connect everything again. And this is probably something that is very common among figure skaters, but...”
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Part 3:
When Hanyu brings a piece of choreography to completion, he generally divides the process into three stages. First, he creates the choreography. Next, he connects it together through video. And then, the “common figure skater experience” mentioned at the end of the previous installment becomes the final step.
“When I watch the edited footage, I notice things like, ‘I’m not using that part of the rink,’ or ‘I’m spending too much time over here.’ Because I’m being viewed from 360 degrees, it becomes even more important that I don’t become biased toward one area. If I get stuck in my own little shell, I tend to stay in the same place too much. I might also end up only rotating in the same direction. So I naturally start thinking things like, ‘Let me rotate this in the opposite direction,’ or ‘Let me turn this toward this side instead,’ or ‘I should place this step here,’ or ‘I should add a difficult turn here.’ I think that’s just the instinct of someone who has been a competitive skater.”
When Hanyu creates a program, he listens to the music more than 500 times. It may seem like a surprising number, but for Hanyu, it is simply the norm.
“Whether I’m creating ‘Ikue’ (Note 1) or choreographing ‘Prequel’ (Note 2), there are parts where I skate with my feelings exactly as they are. But if I skate only with those feelings as they are, there are times when it can end up looking like I’m simply skating based on emotion alone. On the other hand, if I refine everything too much, there is also a kind of loneliness that comes from something becoming too polished. I think that, too, is part of the depth of expression.”
In his April solo show “REALIVE,” where he served as both performer and executive producer, one particularly memorable moment came during the video interlude between programs: after landing a quadruple toe loop, Hanyu said the words, “Welcome back.”
“I felt like, ‘I’ve finally come back.’ After all, it had been such a long time since I had skated. The period when I couldn’t even get on the ice had been really long. To be honest, last year I couldn’t practice jumps at all. There were many areas where I had declined, both technically and physically, and my body’s coordination kept changing more and more. I couldn’t just jump the way I used to, by putting in power and springing up.”
After a period of maintenance, he restarted his activities. However, he faced a challenge. In mid-January of this year, he injured his right ankle. The diagnosis was a bone bruise. Less than two months remained until the ice show “Yuzuru Hanyu notte stellata,” where he serves as the leading performer.
“My feet swelled up so much that I couldn’t put my skates on anymore. If I had left it like that, the skin on the surface would have also been damaged from the friction. I even received steroid injections.”
With the support of his fellow performers, he gave his all and completed all three shows. He delivered skating filled with his soul. One month later, “REALIVE” awaited him. This time, he had to carry the entire performance on his own. The “Welcome back” moment in the video footage was from a full run-through rehearsal held on March 23, 19 days before the actual show.
“I couldn’t really practice properly, it hurt, but the show kept getting closer and closer, and I was getting anxious. I kept thinking, ‘I can’t show this to people like this.’ I didn’t want to show myself in this state. It was a period when I was constantly feeling that pressure. Then, for the first time, I was able to land a quadruple toe loop with a burst of power. “I thought, ‘Welcome back!’ and ‘I’m back!’ and I ended up shouting it.”
“Of course, as long as I continue doing figure skating, injuries are something that come with the territory. My right ankle sprain has also become something of a recurring issue, so it’s something I’ll have to continue dealing with going forward. But I think the combination of that anxiety, the injury, and the gap between the way I saw myself and what my body was actually capable of at the time made it a really difficult experience.”
He completed a 2-hour-and-15-minute performance packed with high-intensity programs. The first half featured seven pieces, including “Otonal.” In the second half, “Prequel” kept him on the ice for nearly 20 minutes straight. In his first solo show in one year and two months, he created an expression that showed a new level of maturity.
In last year’s interview, when asked about his aspirations for his fourth year as a professional, he wrote “the continuation of the continuation”. What would be the theme for his fifth year? After giving it careful thought, Hanyu offered his answer.
“‘The beginning of the continuation.’ I feel like I can finally begin now. To be honest, taking a maintenance period last year was difficult. I wanted to keep practicing all the time, and it was also a period when I had to put aside, for a while, the things I had been working so hard on for everyone. It was really challenging, and I spent that time feeling like, ‘I’m not at a level where I can perform in front of people.’ Now that the pain has gone away, I feel like, ‘I can finally begin.’”
He is currently spending busy days preparing for the fourth installment of his ICE STORY series. The efforts he has made so far, and the evolution that lies ahead. A “beginning of the continuation” that can only inspire anticipation is now underway.
(Note 1: A disaster memorial song performed in collaboration with “Yuzu.” Hanyu himself choreographed the program and skated to it.
Note 2: A long-form piece performed in the second half of “REALIVE.” The music was newly composed by Marihiko Hara, who composed the score for the film “Kokuho.”)
