r/yuzuruhanyu

Behind-the-scenes clip from the photoshoot in Sendai here. Yuzu was skating to “Soranji” by Mrs. GREEN APPLE, one of his favorite artists.

NHK Summer Music Festival: If We Can Meet Through Song (Uta de Aetara)
Special feature - Yuzuru Hanyu x Yuzu collaboration for the memorial song "Ikue" at Xebio Arena Sendai

Source, pg 70 (The Japanese cultural event Main Matsuri is being held from Aug. 14–16, 2026, in Offenbach, Germany)

More Than Gold

Top athletes usually strive to stay at the top for as long as possible. Yuzuru Hanyu did the opposite and reinvented figure skating for himself. Instead of points and medals, for this figure skater, it's about expression, staging, and the question of how sport can become art.

Anyone who has ever seen Yuzuru Hanyu on the ice quickly understands why even people who have little interest in figure skating talk about him. Of course, there are the medals: Olympic gold in Sochi in 2014 and PyeongChang in 2018, plus world championship titles and records. The Japanese skater was the first figure skater since 1952 to win Olympic gold twice in a row. But what made him special could never be measured solely in points.

While other athletes skated routines, Hanyu often seemed to be telling stories. His movements rarely appeared purely technical; even difficult jump combinations had an effortless, almost natural quality. Those watching him often felt less like they were witnessing a competition and more like a performance where sport and expression merged seamlessly.

This also explains why his departure surprised so many. In the summer of 2022, Hanyu ended his competitive career not because he could no longer keep up, but despite still being among the world's best. He ruled out a return to the Olympic Games. For many, this is where the difficult search for the right time to retire begins. Hanyu chose a different path: He stopped in order to begin something new.

Since then, he has used the ice not as a competition surface, but as a stage. In his ICE STORY series, he combines music, light, projections, and personal themes into productions that defy easy categorization. Productions like Gift, RE_PRAY, and Echoes of Life exist somewhere between sport, concert, and theater, often carried by just one person: himself.

It's unusual for a figure skater to carry an entire show alone. Where ensembles usually perform or various stars share the ice, Hanyu holds the attention of an entire audience for hours, without judges or medals.

With REALIVE, Hanyu returned to earlier programs, but not as a repetition. The pieces feel altered and reimagined, as if he were looking back on his own story and, in doing so, retelling it in a slightly new way.

With massive Japanese telecom brand au (operated by KDDI), see the announcement at the x account

(machine translation of the interview with Deep Edge Plus)

—It’s been almost exactly four years since you turned professional in 2022. Looking back, what have these past four years been like for you?

“I feel like I’ve just been charging forward the whole time, I guess. Of course, even when I was competing, there wasn’t a single time when I took a season off. Even after winning at the Olympics, I still wanted to win in the next season, so I kept going, and I’ve always wanted to keep growing, so I’ve just kept doing this all along.”

“Of course, I did set aside what you might call a maintenance period last season, but even during that period, I was still charging forward the whole time. So I feel like these four years have been a period in which I’ve been constantly thinking about believing in my own potential and how far I can push those possibilities.”

—Beyond this constant drive forward, are there any goals or images of what you want to achieve that you have set for yourself?

“Hmm, no (laughs). I simply want to get better. Honestly, I don’t have anything concrete in mind, like a specific performance that I consider my ideal, something I can actually see in a video, or something specific that I want to do. But whenever something suddenly comes to mind, or whenever I think, ‘I want to express this in this way,’ when I actually try moving my body, I can’t do it at all. And that’s really frustrating. I think I just keep thinking, ‘I want to get better,’ and that’s how I’ve continued on, wanting to get better and better.”

—Compared with your competitive days, how has the way you approach pursuing perfection, goals, and so on, in terms of both expression and technical aspects, changed?

“I feel like I’ve continued because I want even more of both, I guess. Of course, saying something like, ‘I’m going to challenge the quadruple Axel,’ and actually attempting it at a solo ice show, within a two-and-a-half-hour program, honestly carries a pretty big risk of injury, so it’s difficult to do. But I still want to keep practicing while pursuing those kinds of things over and over, and even now, I’m still working hard while dreaming of them, constantly reshaping my body along the way.”

“As for expression as well, of course, as I said earlier, there are so many things that I want to do but find that I can’t do at all when the moment comes. So I’m desperately studying and working hard because, first of all, I have to become able to do the things I want to do.”

—What supports that level of discipline? What is it that makes you able to keep working so hard?

“I think it’s partly because people have expectations of me, and also because I feel like I can’t show people something half-finished… How should I put it? It’s a little different from pride, but I don’t want to show something that’s half-finished.”

“As someone who has won two Olympic gold medals, I feel like I’m carrying the weight of the ideal image that everyone expects of me. So I’m always thinking, ‘Higher, higher,’ and I really hate and feel frustrated with myself when I can’t reach beyond that. I think that’s part of what allows me to keep working hard. Or rather than ‘allows me to work hard,’ maybe I keep pushing myself, or drive myself into a corner.”

—When you say that you “keep pushing yourself,” is that really okay?

“Well, I wonder if it’s okay. (Laughs) But I think that’s what being an athlete is like. In all the battles I’ve fought so far, I think that was something I needed in order to get better. And I think my competitive spirit, my belief in my own potential, and those kinds of feelings have always been what pushed my skating further and further. I’ve always wanted that to remain unchanged, and in a sense, I want to stay a child in that respect, or rather, I want to remain a competitor at heart."

—These days, in addition to skating in ice shows yourself, you also produce the show as its lead performer. When you do that, what do you draw inspiration from? Does it come from within yourself, or do you get inspiration from external stimuli? How do you go about developing and expanding your expression?

“Actually, for my own shows, I write the stories myself, direct everything myself, perform in them, do the narration, and handle the visual direction, but I believe that there’s absolutely nothing that comes purely from me that hasn’t been influenced by something else. In other words, there’s no such thing as something that is completely original.”

“I think we’re influenced by something from the moment we’re born. I’m the younger brother, for example, so I must have been influenced in some way by the person who came before me, and even before I was consciously aware of things, I must have been influenced by all kinds of things, learning words, learning gestures, and so on.”

“When I think about it that way, I feel that nothing in the creative work I do, the expressions I create, the various techniques I use, and so on, is truly original. So I think of all of it as external stimuli. I respect all of that, and then I take what I want to show, what I want people to see, and what people would like to see, and squeeze it all tightly together…”

“What should I call it? It’s kind of like an onigiri, a rice ball. (Laughs) I’m thinking about it and trying to make it into the most delicious form.”

“Or rather, an onigiri… I couldn’t think of anything else, but how should I put it? It’s not just about what I want to do, and I don’t think that the things that come from me are original in the first place. I think they absolutely contain the wisdom of those who came before me. So I study a lot, and after studying, I think there must be things that only I can do, not necessarily things that are original, but things that only I can do. So I make lots of combinations that only I can make, and there are surely many things that can only be done within figure skating. I’m very conscious of working hard to make sure that I can properly put on top of all of that the things that everyone wants to see and the things I want to deliver to everyone.”

—Over these four years since turning professional, are there things you feel you’ve made the most progress in, things you’ve become good at or feel you’re now able to do, and conversely, things you want to take your time and continue working hard on from here?

“There’s nothing I’m particularly good at, really. Lately, I’ve been facing figure skating while thinking, ‘I’m really not good at figure skating.’ So I believe that being able to feel that I’m not good enough means there’s still so much room for me to improve, and I want to continue facing it head-on.”

“Also, since I’ve actually started writing my own stories, planning the direction, thinking about the structure, and so on, I feel like I’ve become able to see figure skating and Yuzuru Hanyu from a much more multifaceted perspective. In order to keep expanding that further, I have to study various things, and on top of that, if I want to express those things, I have to become even better at skating. I want to keep that kind of spiral going.”

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The last time JohnWilson shared an update on Yuzu’s blades, the order date was May 25, 2022 (last pic). The 'wing' used to be filled in white, but now it’s just a white outline on the black blade.