Fumiaki Tanaka (田中史朗, born 3 January 1985 in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

) is a Japanese

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

footballer. He plays as a scrum-half for

on international level and for the

Panasonic Wild Knights Saitama Wild Knights (formerly Panasonic Wild Knights) is a Japanese rugby union team formerly based in Ōta city, Gunma prefecture which plays in the Top League. Inspired by Tony Brown at fly half (though he was not captain), it dominated the l ...

and the at domestic level.

Career

Tanaka was not seen as one of the top prospects in Japan whilst at University, but after joining the

in 2007 he played alongside former All Blacks fly half Tony Brown who was credited with helping him to develop immensely and Tanaka himself cites Brown as one of the most important influences on his career. After Tanaka's first season in the

Top League Japan Rugby League One (formerly the Top League) is a rugby union competition in Japan. It is the highest level of professional rugby competition in the country. The Japan Rugby Football Union created the competition in 2003, by absorbing the ...

in 2007/08, he was named in the team of the season alongside Brown and also was named as newcomer of the year. After his first season in the

. Tanaka made his debut for against the Arabian Gulf in May 2008 coming off the bench. He soon became a regular member of the Japan side and made the squad for the

2011 Rugby World Cup The 2011 Rugby World Cup was the seventh Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. The International Rugby Board (IRB) selected New Zealand as the host country in preference to Japan and South Af ...

as first choice scrum half and is currently considered one of Japan's best and most important players. At domestic level, after being named in the Top League team of the season in his first year, he backed that up by being named in it again in 2008–09 and

2010–11 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

. After performing well at the

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

despite it being a disappointing tournament for Japan, along with hooker

Shota Horie (born 21 January 1986 in Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese rugby union player. His preferred position is hooker although he can also play in the back row. He represents Japan at the international level. He has played for the Panasonic Wild Knights in ...

he was signed by

Otago Otago (, ; mi, Ōtākou ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government reg ...

and reunited with Tony Brown, his former teammate at the

who was now his coach. He won plaudits for his performances with

with his coach Brown calling him a "world class player" and the ''

New Zealand Herald ''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation of all newspapers ...

'' noted him as one of the most exciting players in the

ITM Cup ITM may stand for: Education * ITM Global School, an English medium co-educational day school in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India * ITM Law School, one of the professional graduate schools of ITM University * ITM-IFM, Mumbai, India * Institut Tekn ...

and was regarded as a cult hero for Otago and seen as their standout player. Following his good performances with

, he became the first ethnic Japanese player to sign a

Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Building on various Southern Hem ...

contract when he was named in the Highlanders squad for the 2013 season. After signing for the Highlanders, there was significant international media interest in him as the first Japanese player to play Super Rugby. He was said to have most interview requests out of anybody in the Highlanders team and attracted more attention than many of the World Cup winners in the squad. Japanese TV channels

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestri ...

and WOWOW did documentaries on his time in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, he also received a segment on IRB Total Rugby and even made the pages of the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. After initially being limited to mainly to substitute appearances behind

All Blacks The New Zealand national rugby union team, commonly known as the All Blacks ( mi, Ōpango), represents New Zealand in men's international rugby union, which is considered the country's national sport. The team won the Rugby World Cup in 1987 ...

scrum half Aaron Smith, in Tanaka's second start in Super Rugby he was highly lauded for his performance against the

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

which even drew positive comments from the IRB CEO

Brett Gosper Brett Gosper (born 21 June 1959 in Melbourne, Australia) is Head of Europe & UK for the National Football League. Gosper was previously CEO of World Rugby, a former advertising agency leader and an elite level rugby union player. Early life G ...

. In June 2013, Tanaka helped inspire Japan to their first ever win over where he continued his run of form and was praised as one of the game's outstanding performers. He was also instrumental to the Japanese 32–34 victory over the Springboks in the 2015 Rugby World Cup, being selected Man of the Match.

Notes

At just 166 cm tall and weighing about 72 kg, Tanaka is one of the smallest professional rugby players in the world. He was the smallest player at the

, and is understood to be the smallest player ever to have been involved in

. Tanaka has commented that his size "is an advantage". Tanaka has a tradition of shaving his head before the first game of the rugby season.

References

External links

Highlanders profile
* * http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/teams/team=49/player=29893/index.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Tanaka, Fumiaki 1985 births Japanese rugby union players Living people Japan international rugby union players Saitama Wild Knights players Otago rugby union players Highlanders (rugby union) players Rugby union scrum-halves Sportspeople from Kyoto Japanese expatriate rugby union players Expatriate rugby union players in New Zealand Japanese expatriate sportspeople in New Zealand Sunwolves players Yokohama Canon Eagles players Green Rockets Tokatsu players