Emi
Yasuo 安尾 笑

2021.12.27

With a smile always on her face, going down a rocky road to reach a stage of her dream

Emi Yasuo encountered wheelchair basketball roughly ten years before she took part in the Tokyo Paralympic Games. She dashed through this period with all her might. “I was aiming for something big and accordingly made huge sacrifices.” This describes her honest, real feelings. What did she go through in her life and what took her to the Paralympic stage? What her athletic career will look like from now also arouses considerable interest.

A vividly remaining sense of “running”

Several months after the end of the Tokyo Paralympics, Yasuo recalls, “The event took place with no spectators, but it was different from an ordinary international competition in terms of the number of media persons. It provided an opportunity to let more people know about parasports.”Since childhood, Yasuo has been a crutch user. “I was a shy girl. I hated getting in a wheelchair and used crutches instead. When I engaged in a conversation, I felt like I couldn’t join the conversation if I didn’t keep the same eye level of standing people.”

After graduating from high school, she found a job at the Kumamoto Prefectural Office. “I felt positive and began to feel like trying something new.”

At the age of 17, while shopping, she had an accidental encounter with Miki Hirai, a member of the Japan women’s wheelchair basketball national team, who offered Yasuo an opportunity to start the sport. She turned down the offer, but when she recalled Hirai’s words, “Contact me if you feel like doing it,” she could easily connect “something new” to wheelchair basketball. Yasuo did not hesitate to make a move and went on to see practice sessions at the hour and place she was told.

What she saw there was beyond her imagination. “I was really impressed with the people with disabilities playing the sport so seriously and shedding their sweat, and soon I felt like trying it out.” The first time she got into an athletic wheelchair, she “realized what it feels like to ‘run.’”

A big decision to move to Oita

In 2015, Yasuo was selected as a member of the U-25 national team and participated in a world championship event. However, Kumamoto was hit by a big earthquake the following year. As a civil servant with the prefectural office, she worked hard on the reconstruction effort, but her feelings for basketball and the national team grew stronger and stronger. “I didn’t want to do it halfway.” Considering how to spend the rest of her life, she chose to quit her job and moved to Oita.

But she was not able to immediately produce results. “I had many successes and failures that added to my experience,” she said. In 2018, Yasuo became a designated reinforcement athlete and participated in the 2018 Asian Para Games in Indonesia. Around this time, she got a regular position on the national team and established her own playing style, making herself an essential member of the team.

Her parents named her “Emi” (smile) in the hope that “she will always have a smile no matter what happens.” “I like my name,” said Yasuo proudly with a smile on her face.

The philosophy of Emi Yasuo

Better to regret trying something you like than to regret not doing it.