The table tennis competition in 2021 has been put to an end, and the arrangements for 2022 are being released one after another. Not long ago, the Japan Table Tennis Association officially announced its own national championship, the list of athletes in the All Japan Championships, and as many as 972 people will sign up for the matchup from January 24 to 30, including Zhang Benzhihe and Ito Mimako, who has been hanging a free card since the World Table Tennis Championships.
As the two athletes of the Japanese national table tennis team who have the best foreign competition results and have won the national championship in the civil war, Ito Mimako, Zhang Benzhi and have not won the singles championship of the national championship for two consecutive years, so this year they are bound to be humiliated and hit the gold medal again, while Ishikawa Yoshijun and others are on the side of the "defensive" side, striving to defend the championship successfully!
The All Japan Championships is the highest level of competition in The Japanese national table tennis world, but also one of the oldest table tennis events in Asia, which has been held since the second world war, and reached the world-class level in the 50s and 80s, but then the Japanese table tennis team declined for decades, so there was not much outsider attention.
From the level point of view, Japan's competition is roughly equivalent to our table tennis world's National Games + National Championships, but also allows amateur players to participate, so the number of applicants in the past is very large, the technical level is also uneven, but it is clear that most of the athletes belong to the "cannon fodder" existence.
In the last Japan National Championships, the two athletes with the best results and the most optimistic in international competitions failed to win the championship singles, among which Ito Mimachi collapsed in the final, the 3-1 lead was defeated by veteran Ishikawa Yoshinori in 3 consecutive sets, and Zhang Benzhihe did not even score in the semifinals, and finally the men's singles championship was won by the super dark horse and Chuan Ruiji, which broke out a super cold.
It is worth mentioning that Ito Mimachi, Zhang Benzhi and the two did not win the singles championship in 2020, losing to Hayata Hina and Yukiya Utada respectively, which shows that the "inner volume" of the Japanese table tennis world is also very serious, and the two will definitely try to prove themselves again this year.
According to the arrangement, Zhang Benzhihe will sign up for the men's singles, men's doubles, and mixed doubles, and the mixed doubles are still paired with Hayata Hina. However, Ito gave up participating in the mixed doubles this time, just as she chose at the Houston World Table Tennis Championships, which shows that the Japanese team has begun to completely change blood in this project, and Zhang Benji and /Hayata Shina are expected to compete in the National Table Tennis at the Paris Olympics.
At present, it seems that the competition in Japanese men's table tennis will still be very fierce, even the Olympic main players Zhang Benzhihe and Niwa Takashi will be difficult to fight a civil war, and a new dark horse may be born at any time! The situation in The Japanese women's table tennis side is relatively clear, Ito Mimachi, Hayata Hina, Ishikawa Yoshinori has become a three-legged situation, and then it is to see if Hirano Miyu, Kihara Miyu and others can break out.
So who can win next year's Japanese table tennis national championship? The suspense is still there, so let's wait and see what happens!