Sports writer Ben Rothenberg took special notice in August 2020 when three professional tennis tours were shut down for a day in protest for Black Lives Matter. There were protests around the US that summer, but this one was different. Never before had professional tennis shut down during a tournament, but also Rothenberg saw that the person who initially decided not to play on 27 August was someone he had been covering for years: the shy and reticent Naomi Osaka. Rothenberg’s new biography covers Osaka’s quick rise to fame and her maturity as a world champion. Osaka is also a visible example of how modern individual sports such as tennis can scramble nationalities and identities.
When writing about Japan, Rothenberg is fond of the term “rising sun” and uses it a few times, including the first chapter in which he writes about Osaka’s Japanese background. She was born in Osaka, but her surname and birthplace are completely unrelated. Her mother Tamaki grew up on the northern reaches of Hokkaido. Tamaki’s maternal ancestors lived and fished in the Kuril Islands, but when the Soviet Union occupied these islands at the end of WW2, the Osaka family moved to Nemuro on Hokkaido. Tamaki dreamed of living in more cosmopolitan places and ended up studying in Sapporo, where her world opened.
In Sapporo, about seven hours from the eastern tip of Hokkaido where Nemuro sits, teenage Tamaki had a degree of independence from her family she had never before experienced. Her branching out reached another level when she changed the concentration of her coursework from piano to English in her second year in Sapporo. Tamaki had been interested in learning the language that could open doors to the world beyond her island nation from a young age: she had taken extracurricular classes in the language in Nemuro and sometimes spoke English with American missionaries in the town.
Tamaki’s life would change even more when she met a Haitian-American shop owner named Leonard François. Leonard ran a clothing shop in Sapporo and the two met when Tamaki and a friend went shopping there. They started dating in secret, worried that her parents would not approve. They were correct and moved far away from Hokkaido, ending up in Osaka, which just happened to be Tamaki’s surname. It was in Osaka that the couple married and had their two daughters, Mari in early 1996 and Naomi in late 1997.
The couple decided to give their daughters first names that would be easy to pronounce both in and outside of Japan. But for the ease of living in Japan, they gave their daughters Tamaki’s surname. The story goes that when Tamaki and Leonard watched Serena and Venus Williams play doubles at the 1999 French Open, they suddenly saw opportunities for their toddler daughters, not so much the fame or money, but rather the way Serena and Venus traveled the world and became positive role models. But it wasn’t easy to get the girls into tennis in Japan.
When Naomi was only three, her parents decided to move to the United States, where they would have more help with childcare. Leonard’s family lived just outside New York City and they moved in with them. Up to this point, the family of four spoke Japanese at home, but once in New York, they spoke in English. Naomi would lose her fluency in Japanese and become more immersed in Leonard’s Haitian American culture. Both Mari and Naomi continued with their tennis and the family eventually moved to Florida, where they could play year-round.
Money continued to be a problem and they flitted between coaches while they tried to avoid eviction from their home. In a last minute decision, Tamaki brought her family to Palo Alto, California for 406th-ranked Naomi and 542nd-ranked Mari to compete in the Bank of the West Classic.
Naomi Osaka landed into one of the toughest possible slots in the stacked Stanford main draw: she was pitted against 19th-ranked Samantha Stosur of Australia, who had stunningly routed Serena Williams in the final of the 2011 U.S. Open less than three years earlier.
The rest, as they say, is history. For strategic reasons, Tamaki and Leonard listed their girls’ home country as Japan. They figured the pool of professional tennis players there was a lot less crowded than it was in the US. Mari’s career took a back seat as Naomi’s shone.
For the first half of the book, Naomi freezes up when it comes time to give press conferences. As she matures and the pandemic breaks out, Naomi finds her social justice voice, inspiring the day-long break in August 2020 to memorialize George Floyd and other Black Americans who suffered police brutality and wearing a face mask at the 2020 US Open, each day printed with the name of a different victim.
The book is long at 450 pages and includes lots of the play-by-play from her major matches, but it doesn’t seem bogged down by minutiae. Naomi is still young and although Rothenberg ends his book when she gives birth to her daughter Shai in 2023, this is still very much a coming-of-age story. It is tempting to see in Naomi Osaka a multi-ethnic, multi-identity future where individuals are judged on their abilities and accomplishments. But whether such a world can exist outside the ranks of the globalized elite, of which sports stars are a part, remains to be seen.