For many athletes in Japan, the sporting year starts long before the first whistle and much as it does for everyone else — with hatsumōde, the New Year’s custom of visiting a shrine or temple to offer the year’s first prayers.
It works like a warm-up: a way to invite early luck and settle into the rhythm of competition. And that ritual spans generations, from rising juniors right through to the elite levels of a sport.
In 2024, breaker Shigeyuki Nakarai, better known as B-Boy Shigekix, skateboarder Momiji Nishiya, wrestler Akari Fujinami and climber Tomoa Narasaki were among those weaving hatsumōde into the early days of their Olympic year, paying visits to sites from well-known temples like Kawasaki Daishi to small neighborhood sanctuaries to mark a fresh start.
“Life moves so fast that pausing at the start of the year to press my hands together in prayer helps reset my mind and heart,” Shigekix, who finished fourth in Paris at the first Games to showcase breaking, told The Japan Times. “It reminds me to treat each new day with care. For me, hatsumōde is an important moment to return to my center and ground myself.”
The 23-year-old tries to bring that mentality with him into competitions. Breaking, with all its youthful energy and sharp, contemporary edge, might not look like a place for introspection. Yet beneath it all, he says, the dance is really a “dialogue you have with yourself,” a moment of inner clarity that mirrors the grounding he seeks each new year.
Shigekix competes at the Paris Olympics in August 2024. The elite breaker says that hatsumōde, the New Year’s custom of visiting a shrine or temple to offer the year’s first prayers, helps him reset his mind and heart.
| USA Today / VIA REUTERS
And that quiet inward turn isn’t just his. It’s a sentiment many athletes share — with such connections rooted in the spiritual side of Japanese sport, said Yorio Fujimoto, a professor in Kokugakuin University’s Faculty of Shinto Studies.
“Athletes go to shrines or temples — often ones connected to their home region, training base, or a shared sense of identity — either individually or as teams, mainly to pray for victory and peak performance ahead of the season,” Fujimoto said. “More broadly, they’re also praying to stay healthy, avoid injuries and remain safe in daily life and travel.”
Regardless of the sport, the new year unfolds the same way for many Japanese athletes.
The first practice of the season carries its own meaning: in soccer it’s hatsu-geri (first kick), in baseball hatsu-nage (first throw), in tennis and golf hatsu-uchi (first hit), in surfing and horseracing hatsu-nori (first ride), in running hatsu-run (first run), in sumo hatsu-geiko (first training), and so on.
For a youth soccer team, it might look like a lighthearted kickaround, for local surfers, a ride out to catch the year’s first sunrise, and for professional pitchers, their first easy throwing session of the year.
Swallows slugger Munetaka Murakami, who recently signed with the White Sox in MLB, hangs an ema at Meiji Jingu in Tokyo in February.
| JIJI
Japan’s sports culture has long intertwined with the divine, with athletes invoking shōbu no kamisama (gods of competition) and supōtsu no shugoshin (protective sports deities), figures rooted in Shinto ideas of fortune, protection and guidance.
According to Fujimoto, the connection stretches back to ancient myths in the “Kojiki,” Japan’s oldest collection of legends, including god-versus-god wrestling tales seen as the origins of sumo.
“Those deities, Takemikazuchi and Takeminakata, are still worshipped today as gods of competition,” he said. “Their influence runs through Japanese sport, from martial arts shaped by ancient warrior beliefs to the Yatagarasu — the three-legged crow of divine guidance on the national soccer team’s jersey — and even to Hachiman shrines long revered by the samurai.”
In the modern era, that takes a familiar form: teams in NPB, the J. League, Japan Rugby League One and other professional sports leagues have made shrine visits part of their preseason tradition. Early in the year, players, coaches and staff gather to offer their hisshō kigan (prayers for victory), marking the season’s first collective act of intention.
Dragons manager Kazuki Inoue accepts a sacred sake offering at Atsuta Jingu in Nagoya in March during a visit by Chunichi players ahead of the start of the NPB season.
| JIJI
While Western teams don’t typically visit churches as an official preseason custom, many athletes elsewhere engage in informal faith-based practices, such as prayer circles, team blessings or individual moments of prayer. In Japan, however, shrine visits are a more formalized, culturally rooted tradition shared across entire teams.
Even outside the New Year’s season, it’s common for Japanese players to turn to the gods in moments of need, with many visiting sacred sites before major competitions or while recovering from injury. It’s less a matter of religious belief than an acknowledgment of the mental and spiritual side of sports.
Many athletes also carry omamori, small cloth amulets sold at shrines and temples. They get them themselves or receive them as gifts — a bit like saint medals or guardian angel tokens, gentle reminders of encouragement slipped into pockets or bags.
Figure skater Kaori Sakamoto, for example, arrived at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics with 20 omamori swaying from her backpack. In 2023, public enthusiasm for athletes’ charms resurfaced when Samurai Japan’s World Baseball Classic victory sent demand soaring for the kachi-mamori (victory charm) from Nagano’s Zenkoji temple worn by members of the team.
Moments like these show how an athlete’s private rituals can spill into fan culture, shaping the way supporters interact with the spiritual world around sports.
Tsurugamine Inari Jinja in Yokohama — once a modest local shrine in Shohei Ohtani’s mother’s hometown — is now a popular pilgrimage destination.
| Tsurugamine Inari Jinja
Shrines linked to famous athletes often become “power spots” for fans. One such place is Tsurugamine Inari Jinja in Yokohama — once a modest local shrine in Shohei Ohtani’s mother’s hometown and now a popular pilgrimage destination.
Names alone can spark a following too. The best-known example is probably Kobe’s Yuzuruha Shrine, whose name resembles that of figure skating icon Yuzuru Hanyu and draws steady visits from his legions of fans.
For athletes, however, shrine visits serve a different purpose: they are less about publicity and more about personal reflection. Shinto emphasizes purification, balance and gratitude, values that sit comfortably alongside ideas of sportsmanship.
This is why many athletes turn to gen-katsugi — the rituals they perform to invite success or calm nerves. From wearing the same lucky item to eating katsudon (pork cutlet over rice, but more importantly a pun on katsu, “to win”) before big games, these habits share the same impulse as shrine visits: the belief that preparation isn’t only physical, but spiritual.
Even something as simple as picking up stray trash on the field becomes a ritualistic action for Ohtani, who sees it as a way of “picking up luck,” an idea he outlined in a goal-setting mandala chart he created in high school.
Ultimately, the line between routine and ritual in Japanese sport is thin.
A ring purification ceremony is held at IG Arena a day before the start of the Nagoya Basho.
| JIJI
Fujimoto notes that nowhere is this clearer than in sumo, where a dohyō matsuri (ring-purification ceremony) consecrates the ring, making it “a sacred space where wrestlers show respect to one another and to the divine presence believed to dwell there.”
Even in sports far removed from the sumo ring, that same ethos shapes how Japanese athletes approach competition. Bowing toward the field or court is rooted in reihō etiquette, a tradition closely tied to bushidō and the samurai code of honoring the ground on which they perform.
That attitude applies to equipment as well. Athletes polish bats, wipe down rackets and tend to their gear with care — a practice Fujimoto traces to the old belief that objects can hold spirit. Ichiro Suzuki was famous for it, treating his bats with the same calm and deliberate focus he brought to the batter’s box. What looks like simple maintenance becomes a small act of gratitude, another place where routine quietly slips into ritual.
Taken together, these gestures form a foundation of Japanese sport, and they rise to the surface again as the calendar resets.
“New Year’s is a time of purification,” Fujimoto said. “A moment for athletes to clear their minds, greet the divine and get ready for what comes next.”
