Olympic medallist Kanoa Igarashi on learning to love his multicultural background: 'Always in my head, I felt like an outsider'
Kanoa Igarashi spent most of his life switching between Japanese and American cultures, missing a sense of identity until he competed at the home Olympic Games in Tokyo. Olympics.com sat down with the Japanese surfer to learn about that transformational journey, what the ocean taught him, and the importance of making his grandparents proud.
Surfing
Olympic surfing medallist Kanoa Igarashi felt he had two identities growing up.
Outside, roaming the boisterous halls of his California school, he led an all-American lifestyle. In the evening, he followed the time-honoured traditions of his Japanese household.
It was not an easy balance.
“Sometimes in school and sometimes just in daily life, I felt like a bit of an outsider because I was Japanese in an American culture, having different beliefs, having different lifestyles. No matter how much you grow up in a culture, you still have that," Igarashi told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview. "For me, I go back home and it's Japanese culture, so always in my head I felt like an outsider."
Torn between two worlds, the one place where Igarashi felt he fully belonged was the ocean.
Years later, surfing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021 at his father’s home swell in Chiba prefecture, Igarashi not only came away with a silver medal, but also had a mind-changing experience that would lead him to embrace his own unique mix of cultures.
Kanoa Igarashi: Growing up between two worlds
Igarashi was born to Japanese parents in California, USA, being acutely aware of the differences between his family and those of his classmates.
“I had a very unique childhood, having my parents be 100 per cent Japanese, growing up in Los Angeles, growing up somewhere where it was very foreign for them,” he recalled. “If it was foreign for my parents, it was extra foreign for me.”
While Igarashi got used to being in the United States before his parents did, thanks to his enrolment in local public schools, the feeling of being different did not go away.
At home, the Japanese culture prevailed in everything - language, food, customs - leaving the schoolboy feeling like he was transporting between different countries every day.
“When I was outside of my house, I had a very American culture because of my American friends. And then I would go back home and it would just be a complete Japanese culture. The balance for me was very unique,” Igarashi said. “It was this crazy mix that I had.”
A surfer’s home: Finding a place of belonging on the ocean
Igarashi was introduced to surfing from a young age, but first from a distance.
His father Tsutomu was an avid surfer in Japan and kept his boards freshly waxed once the family settled near Huntington Beach in California. While the elder Igarashi and his friends surfed the waves, the young boy played in the sand on shore. Seeing how much fun his father was having, however, it was not long before a three-year-old Igarashi was begging to be taken out on a surfboard himself.
Similarly to his father, surfing soon became Igarashi’s passion. But it was not only the bliss of catching the perfect wave that proved so enticing.
Paddling out in the early mornings before school classes, his father next to him, Igarashi would look around and notice other kids his age in the water. Later in the day, they would meet each other in the school hallways, the conversation inevitably veering to the sport they had in common.
“The ocean was what kind of blended me into society, and I'll be forever thankful for that,” Igarashi said. “What the ocean taught me was that it really is a place where everyone is a human being. Everyone's training one passion. Everyone's in the water, everyone's surfing.”
“No matter what race you are, no matter where you're from, no matter what you do, when you're in the water, you're just one.” - Kanoa Igarashi to Olympics.com
While school always came first in the Igarashi household, the future Olympian would rush off to the beach as soon as he completed his lessons. His younger brother Keanu, who now competes on the World Surf League (WSL) Qualifying Series, would later join him on the waves.
Kanoa's own journey into competitive surfing began at age six when he entered his first event, fought his way through the different rounds, and won.
By 12, he was criss-crossing the world on his own, paddling out in locations as far away as France and Indonesia, and dealing with whatever mishaps arose. Once, his flight from New York was cancelled and Igarashi had to stay in USA’s biggest city alone. At 14, he found himself stranded in Australia with a broken leg.
Igarashi’s dedication paid off when he qualified for the WSL Championship Tour in 2016. At 18, he was the youngest rookie on the Tour and the first ever surfer from Japan to make the cut.
His family held a traditional Japanese sake ceremony to celebrate the milestone.
Igarashi's turning point at Tokyo 2020: Embracing the “controlled chaos”
Igarashi’s status as the sole Japanese surfer on the WSL Championship Tour kept him in familiar territory of balancing and representing different cultures.
It was not until the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021, when his two worlds blended into one.
Being surrounded by an eclectic mix of athletes from different cultures, speaking different languages, gave Igarashi the push to embrace his own differences.
“It was really there when I realised how unique my lifestyle was growing up and my childhood. It was very essential for not only my success, but just me as a person in the world,” Igarashi told us.
“I guess that kind of controlled chaos, it’s made me into who I am today.”
Kanoa Igarashi with Team Japan at the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games.
The Olympics in Tokyo turned out to be a full-circle moment not only for Igarashi, but his family as well.
Then 23 years old, Igarashi took a silver medal in the men's shortboard event at Tsurigasaki Beach, where his father came almost every day to surf before moving to California, and where he would later take his young son as well.
“The happiness it gave my grandparents, my cousins, my family members, it was very special,” Igarashi said of his Olympic medal. “Coming from a Japanese family that have no idea what surfing is – obviously they were involved because of me growing up – but they would never have thought that I would be an Olympic athlete, and so when that moment came, they really realised that what I was doing was not just a little hobby that I did on the weekend. It was something that had a lot more weight than they thought.
“It’s something that I'm very, very proud of.”
Igarashi is now hoping to give his family even more reasons to celebrate. Having secured a provisional Paris 2024 qualifying quota through the Championship Tour ranking, he is preparing to line up to defend his ISA World Surfing Games team title in Puerto Rico (23 February - 3 March, live on Olympics.com), before taking a second stab at Olympic gold, this time on the famous Teahupo’o wave.
“It should be the biggest year I've had in my career,” the Japanese surfer said.