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Jiggly_333 · 01-12-2021, 01:01 AM

Before coming to this interview, I did some research. It’s something that bugged me ever since I saw this girl’s metrics. There’s this scene in Lost in Translation where Bob, played by Bill Murray, struggles with the height of a shower head while in a Tokyo hotel. Bill Murray is 6’2”, about the average height of an NHL player. But the height of an average man in Japan, a number I could only get as recent as 2007, is about 5’8”. Taller than me, but whatever. So I was thinking about the height of that shower head and if there were any other places where height would be a problem. I remembered the stories of Wilt Chamberlain, the 7’1” NBA Hall of Famer who actually wanted his nickname to be “The Big Dipper'' in reference to the way he had to dip his head whenever he entered a room. The height of an average door in America is 6’8”, anyone at or above that height has to dip their head down as they enter a doorway. And I found that in Japan, it’s shorter, standing at just about 6 foot even.

I just found myself wondering how uncomfortable this girl’s life has been. Born in Kobe, Japan, Kou Saotome always found it difficult fitting in with her peers. She used to blend into the background, reading a book quietly in the corner of the classroom. But now she stands out brighter probably than any of her old classmates. A different, more focused study in 2019 conducted by NCD Risk Factor Collaboration in 2019 reported that the average height of a 19 year-old girl in Japan was 5’2½”. Saotome dips her way into our meeting room, and straightens back out again to reveal her full 6’11” frame at just 18 years old.

One of the first things I learned while setting up this interview was that Saotome doesn’t know any English. While you can’t expect everyone in the world to speak the same language as you, it did seem a bit weird that a hockey player didn’t speak one of the major languages in hockey. I asked her if she spoke Russian, but she said that she only really understands some Russian from the KHL streams, she doesn’t speak it. What she does speak is German. But luckily enough, I’ve watched enough anime to handle this interview (and an actual interpreter because anime is not enough to teach you a language).

Another thing I learned about Kou Saotome in this process was how shy and soft-spoken she was. Though she cuts such an imposing figure, her mannerisms betray that of just an 18 year-old girl surrounded by cameras and people she doesn’t know. She sits uncomfortably on the stool we’ve provided, not quite sure of where to place her feet. When we talked to her about her childhood, she said that she didn’t really make many friends.

“I’ve been told that I wouldn’t even join the other kids in elementary school when we’d go out for recess. I’d usually be sitting under this big tree in the yard watching cars pass by on the street.”

As she got older, others would hang out with each other and talk during lunch, but she’d sit quietly in her seat reading. Saotome said that she couldn’t even fit into the literature club at the school, since those in the club weren’t into the manga and light novels she would read.

The story of Saotome’s childhood would be incomplete without talking about a tragedy early in her life. Just a month after Kou’s second birthday, her mother was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. Before she turned three, Kou’s mother passed away.

“I think that I was too young to even know what was going on. I don’t think I fully understood what had happened to Mom until I was 11 or 12.”

By the time Kou was 5, her father had remarried, this time to a German woman who he had met through work: Ada.

“I don’t have a very good memory so I think that one day Dad came home and called Ada my ‘new Mom’ and I just accepted it. I’d been told up until that point that Mom was just ‘not here anymore’ and assumed that this person was my mother and I loved her instinctively. I was a kid who needed a mom.”

Ada Hummels-Saotome would change her new daughter’s life in a very unexpected way from then on. Not only was this how Kou learned German, but how she was integrated into the Hummels’ family. Due to Ada’s homesickness, the family would go and visit Ada’s parents’ home in Weisbaden whenever they got a chance. In fact, a lot of the time it would just be Ada and the kids, with Kou’s father being held back at work. There, Kou met her “Opa-chan”.

“おばあちゃん？” (Grandma?)
“いえ, 「おぱちゃん」” (No, “Opa-chan”.)

Apparently when Kou was still young and learning language in general, her grasp on Japanese and German was fairly fluid. And when Ada introduced Kou to her new grandfather in German, Kou thought it was his name and added the familiar suffix “-chan” to the German word for grandfather: “Opa”. When Ada explained to her father what had happened, he thought it was adorable enough that he let her call him that. It’s only coincidence that the bilingual portmanteau sounds a lot like the Japanese word for “Old Lady”.

“Even when there wasn’t any hockey on live, Opa-chan always had some NHL or KHL game saved and ready to watch. I learned that no one would bother Opa-chan when he was watching hockey and whenever I’d sit and watch with him he wouldn’t let anyone take me away to do chores.”

Kou’s “Opa-chan” is Leroy Hummels, a former German hockey player who would spend his entire career in Germany, starting in the Eishockey-Bundesliga back in the late 1970’s and playing well into his 40s in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga before retiring in 2007.

“Opa-chan would always encourage me to ask questions about anything in hockey I didn’t understand and while no one else would interrupt his watching, he loved explaining even the most complex topics about the game.”

Back home in Japan, Kou Saotome was a bit taller than the other girls in middle school. It wasn’t quite the stark difference that it is now, but she was still seen as a freak by classmates.

“They’d call me a ‘Cyclops.’”

In order to learn some sort of self-defense, Kou would join the kendo club in middle school. She enjoyed the disciplined routine of working out, a lucky habit that became something that she’d carry with her the rest of her life. But as she made her way into junior high, Kou’s size became apparent.

“My dad is also 6’11” and apparently my mom was also fairly tall at around 6’1”.”

Kou’s genes must have hit something in just the right way to send her shooting up into her massive size. And with her strict training regimen that she had for herself at this point, she began to put on more muscle. Kou became the girl she is now in that time in more ways than just physically.

Saotome was content to continue on with kendo, but her “Opa-chan” had other ideas for her.

“We’d always go skating in Germany whenever we’d go. Even if it was in the summer, Opa-chan would always take us to some rink nearby in Mainz and we’d just go skating. And when I started growing, Opa-chan would start putting a hockey stick in my hand and we’d just pass the puck around and shoot a bit.”

Leroy convinced Kou to try playing hockey. Kou was apprehensive at first. Not only did her school not have a hockey club, but she was a girl. Would there be any club that’d take her? But Leroy didn’t want that to stop her.

“Opa-chan said that he had some friends in Frankfurt who ran regular non-contact games for some old guys and based on my size they would let me play with them. I was 14 and already 6’3”.”

Kou learned a lot from those guys, mostly former pros whose careers had never gotten going, and started to gain a bit more confidence on the ice. Eventually she’d apply for Tsujimoto Academy in Tokyo, known in the ice hockey community in Japan as one of the best schools around. While getting in on scholastic merit, Saotome would still have to try-out in order to make it onto the team.

“I remember that the moment coach saw me, he put me immediately on defense. I think he expected me to be a more physical player than I am.”

It’s true. Despite being almost 200 lbs of pure muscle, Kou isn’t much of a fighter. She’s still that shy girl who reads romance novels before class. So when expected to lay down hits in the defensive zone, Saotome was a bit out of place. Luckily, the coach didn’t need any convincing to at least try her out on the forward line, closer to goal. And there, he found gold.

“I think that my kendo training helped me be more aware of my stick and where it is.”

Kou Saotome’s special ability is her screening. She gets almost all her goals hanging out around the crease and causing trouble for the goalie. At her height, she has the ability to control her stick from a higher vantage point than everyone else. While she still must keep her stick below everyone else’s shoulders, it still gives her enough maneuverability to redirect shots better than any of her peers.

So that’s where Kou Saotome has been for the past three years.

“It was difficult to move out at a young age, but we decided it would be best if I lived in Tokyo instead of with Leon and Hana in Kobe.”

Leon and Hana are Kou’s younger brother and sister, Ada’s children. Though much younger, Leon has already shown his own interest in hockey.

“I think he’s very lucky that we actually did the research a few years ago to find a hockey club for me because now we know where the best place for him would be.”

Now, Kou is set for a new challenge as she recently applied for entry into the SMJHL Draft.

“I’ve heard so many things about this league from Opa-chan’s friends in Germany and I’ve decided that I want to see what I can do.”

So that’s where we leave the story now. Though she is currently eligible to be signed at this moment by any SMJHL team, she expects that she’ll be waiting until the draft to be picked up.

“My biggest hope is that I can make friends with my new teammates. Tokyo is pretty far from Kobe, but America is even farther. I’d like to have friends I can count on on the ice.”

Before she leaves, I decided to ask for her input on any possible nicknames for the media to call her. She had spoken of her past, being bullied as a kid for her size. And even Wilt Chamberlain, as mentioned before, preferred to be called something other than "Wilt the Stilt". It's only fair to let Kou have a say in her own portrayal. She stops and thinks for a while. Then, her eyes light up as she looks back up at me:

"Krieger-Hime"

And with that, Kou Saotome, The "Warrior Princess", stands up, thanks me (and the interpreter) for the interview, and dips her way out of the room.

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Jamie T Wrote:But I wish I'd been a little more exceptional
And I wish I'd been a little unconventional
But I was not enough, no, I'm not enough

*roastpuff* · 01-12-2021, 12:18 PM

Very well written. I enjoyed reading that!

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