was a Japanese
table tennis player, coach, president of the
ITTF and former World No. 1 who won 12
World Championship
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
titles during his career. Ogimura was also a key figure in the
Ping Pong Diplomacy
Ping-pong diplomacy ( ''Pīngpāng wàijiāo'') refers to the exchange of table tennis (ping-pong) players between the United States (US) and People's Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s, that began during the 1971 World Table Tennis Cha ...
events of the early 1970s, as well as being instrumental in
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
playing as a unified team at the
1991 World Table Tennis Championships
The 1991 World Table Tennis Championships were held in Chiba from April 24 to May 6, 1991.
North Korea and South Korea fielded a unified team under the name Korea (コリア ''Koria''), the first of all Unified Korean sporting teams. The women's ...
.
Early life
Ogimura was born in
Itō, Shizuoka
280px, Itō City Hall
is a city located on the eastern shore of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 68,773 in 36,717 households and a population density of 550 persons per km². The tota ...
, in
1932
Events January
* January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.
* January 9 – Sakuradamon Incident (1932), Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort ...
. His father died when Ogimura was two years old and his mother often worked too late to take care of him.
Ogimura began playing table tennis in April 1948 as a student at Metropolitan Tenth Junior High School, where he was a student. At the age of 16, Ogimura started practicing the sport at the Musashino table tennis hall, run by Hisae Uehara, in
Kichijoji,
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
.
He later enrolled in the
Tokyo Metropolitan University
, often referred to as TMU, is a Public Research University, public research university in Japan.
Origin
The origin of Tokyo Metropolitan University was Prefectural Higher School, under the old system of education, established by Tokyo Prefec ...
and, in 1953 he transferred on a scholarship to Tengaku Nihon University's Faculty of Arts, Department of Films.
Table tennis career
He won the All-Japan National Championships and represented Japan at the
World Championships
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
.
He won 12 world titles
at the Championships including men's singles in 1954 and 1956,
together with 5 consecutive titles in the team competitions.
He also won three
English Open
The English Open was a professional golf tournament held in England. First played in 1988, it was an annual event on the European Tour until 2002. After several aborted attempts at reviving the tournament, it returned to the tour schedule in 20 ...
titles.
Retirement
After his retirement, Ogimura coached overseas in Sweden, China and USA. He got involved in the
Japanese Olympic Committee
The is the National Olympic Committee in Japan for the Olympic Games movement, based in Tokyo, Japan. It is a non-profit organisation that selects teams and raises funds to send Japanese competitors to Olympic events organised by the Internati ...
and Japan Table Tennis Association.
He became an executive member of the
International Table Tennis Federation
The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) is the governing body for all national table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the p ...
in 1973 and president in 1987. In 1994, Ogimura died of lung cancer; he was survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.
He was inducted into the ITTF Hall of Fame in 1997.
The "Ping-pong Diplomat"
Ichiro Ogimura was a key figure in the “
Ping-pong Diplomacy
Ping-pong diplomacy ( ''Pīngpāng wàijiāo'') refers to the exchange of table tennis (ping-pong) players between the United States (US) and People's Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s, that began during the 1971 World Table Tennis Cha ...
” of the early 1970s, and has been called “a giant of sports diplomacy” and garnered the nickname, the “Ping-pong Diplomat.”
While the meeting of
Glenn Cowan
Glenn L. Cowan (August 25, 1952 – April 6, 2004) was an American table tennis player.
Biography
Cowan was from New Rochelle, New York, and was Jewish. His parents were Phil (a television executive, who died at age 48) and Fran Cowan. The famil ...
and
Zhuang Zedong
Zhuang Zedong (Chuang Tse-tung; August 25, 1940 – February 10, 2013) was a Chinese table tennis player, three-time world men's singles champion and champion at numerous other table tennis events and a well-known political personality during ...
is often used as the catalyst for the “Ping Pong Diplomacy” movement, Ogimura had already been working behind the scenes to arrange for China’s return to the international table tennis scene. On Ogimura’s insistence, Chinese Premier,
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai (; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 J ...
, allowed the Chinese national team to take part in the
1971 World Table Tennis Championships
The 1971 World Table Tennis Championships (31st) were held in Nagoya from March 28 to April 7, 1971.
The Chinese players returned following a lengthy absence.
The nations represented were Austria, Czechoslovakia, the People's Republic of China, ...
in
Nagoya
is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most pop ...
,
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 ...
. It was at this tournament where Cowen and Zedong had their chance meeting, an event which led to the meeting of
President Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was t ...
and
Chairman Mao
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC ...
.
The “highlight of Ogimura’s table tennis diplomacy” was his work in leading
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...
and
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
to play as a unified Korean team at the
1991 World Table Tennis Championships
The 1991 World Table Tennis Championships were held in Chiba from April 24 to May 6, 1991.
North Korea and South Korea fielded a unified team under the name Korea (コリア ''Koria''), the first of all Unified Korean sporting teams. The women's ...
in
Chiba
Chiba may refer to:
Places China
* (), town in Jianli County, Jingzhou, Hubei
Japan
* Chiba (city), capital of Chiba Prefecture
** Chiba Station, a train station
* Chiba Prefecture, a sub-national jurisdiction in the Greater Tokyo Area on ...
,
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 ...
. Prior to the championships, Ogimura “visited South Korea 20 times and traveled to North Korea 15 times to plead for a unified team from the Korean peninsula. Ogimura worked with local Japanese government heads to create joint training camps in the cities of Nagano, Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture, and Chiba, and secured agreement from the
ITTF for North Korea and South Korea to compete under the unified name of “Korea” – the first such occurrence since the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
.
The unified Korean team played under a white flag depicting the
Korean peninsula
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
in blue, and used the Korean
folksong
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
,
Arirang
"Arirang" (; ) is a Korean folk song. There are about 3,600 variations of 60 different versions of the song, all of which include a refrain similar to "''Arirang, arirang, arariyo'' ()". It is estimated the song is more than 600 years old.
...
, rather than a
national anthem
A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...
of the North or the South. The competition saw the Korean team win one gold medal, one silver and two bronze medals.
Ichiro Ogimura also served as the Japanese goodwill ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1954.
Playing Style
The "Fifty-One Percent Doctrine” was a playing style invented and popularised by Ogimura. It encouraged an aggressive playing style whereby a smash shot would be risked by a player if they believed they had a 51% or higher chance of defeating the opponent with it. This style was later adopted by world champions such as
Zhuang Zedong
Zhuang Zedong (Chuang Tse-tung; August 25, 1940 – February 10, 2013) was a Chinese table tennis player, three-time world men's singles champion and champion at numerous other table tennis events and a well-known political personality during ...
and
Stellan Bengtsson, to both of whom Ogimura served as a coach and mentor.
Equipment
Ogimura was active in the development of table tennis equipment, designing a shoe especially designed for table tennis for Japanese footwear brand,
Koyo Bear. In Britain, the shoes were marketed in cooperation with the table tennis equipment brand and co-branded with the Joola logo.
See also
*
List of table tennis players
This list of table tennis players is alphabetically ordered by surname. The main source of the information included in this page is the official International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) database. More detailed information about their careers is ...
*
List of World Table Tennis Championships medalists
Results of individual events
The tables below are medalists of individual events (men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles and mixed).
Men's singles
Medal table
Women's singles
The champion of women's singles in 1937 was declared ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ogimura
1932 births
1994 deaths
Japanese male table tennis players
Japanese table tennis coaches
Asian Games medalists in table tennis
Sportspeople from Shizuoka Prefecture
Nihon University alumni
Table tennis players at the 1958 Asian Games
Table tennis players at the 1962 Asian Games
Asian Games gold medalists for Japan
Asian Games silver medalists for Japan
Asian Games bronze medalists for Japan
Medalists at the 1958 Asian Games
Medalists at the 1962 Asian Games
Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon
Presidents of the International Table Tennis Federation