From Student Pro-Wrestling, the Brightest Star
ARCHIVAL DOSSIER: HANAKO
- Stature: 181 cm (5’11)
- Hometown Origin: Kyoto (relocated to Kanagawa for university)
- Collegiate Roots: UWF Kanto Student Pro-Wrestling Federation (Nihon University)
- Student Debut: March 14 (Sophomore Year) at Wrestle Butokan (Ice Ribbon Dojo) following a December 12 pre-debut
- Pre-Pro Proving Ground: Prominence (singles match vs. Risa Sera at Shin-Kiba, August 28, 2022)
- Stardom Debut: First NEW BLOOD big match (teaming with Lady C vs. Maika & Himeka)
- Signature Arsenal: Big Boot (modeled on Saki Akai & Yuki Kamifuku), JP Coaster (inherited from Himeka), Shirasagi (taught by Shinsuke Nakamura)
- Unit & Tag Team: STARS / Hai High Mate (with Maika, joined simultaneously in September)
- Accolades: Pro-Wrestling EVE Tag Team Champion, Future of Stardom Champion, NEW BLOOD Tag Team Champion, 5STAR GP Knockout Finals Qualifier (2026)
“It looked like it was shining. I figured if I was going to compete, I wanted to test myself starting from the highest level.”
-HANAKO
Original Interview by Eiichi Narukawa (Weekly Pro-Wrestling) | Translated & Adapted for Print
Walk down any arena hallway in Japanese women’s professional wrestling, and you will see HANAKO long before she ever steps through the curtain. At 181 cm, she stands out as exceptionally tall even in an industry where physical size is a major asset. Her résumé reads like an improbable, fascinating riddle: 181 cm, an alumna of collegiate student pro-wrestling, and a past ring name bestowed as an homage to deathmatch icon Risa Sera. Yet beneath that imposing frame lies a story defined as much by self-doubt and grueling dojo humility as by raw physical gifts, the journey of a young woman from student pro-wrestling who tasted bitter struggle inside the Stardom ring, found salvation through the mentorship of Maika, and now fights to become the brightest star in the sky.
Size is supposed to be a blessing in professional wrestling. In middle school, it felt like a curse.
I. 181 CM & THE KYOTO SPARK
Even within a profession where physical stature carries immense weight, 181 cm sets a wrestler apart from the pack. HANAKO came by her height honestly. Her father is tall, while both her mother and older sister stand slightly above average, creating the household environment in which she grew big. Throughout her school years, whenever students lined up by height, she was permanently stationed at the very back of the line. That vantage point carried minor everyday perks—she could sit with plenty of legroom during school assemblies, and she was the first among her peers to easily reach the hanging straps on commuter trains. Still, there were times when she was hurt after classmates treated her unkindly and told her she was “way too big.”
“From as far back as I can remember, it felt like I was the biggest among my friends,” HANAKO recalls. “I was always about a head taller than everyone else, so it constantly felt like I had wandered into the wrong grade (laughs). I always had this desire to grow up quickly, so right up until I graduated from elementary school, I was actually happy about being big. Once I got to junior high school, though, I felt like people were looking at me strangely. I really started feeling like, ‘Maybe I hate being this tall.'”
Despite the assumptions people routinely make about someone her height, she never played volleyball or basketball. Instead, she took swimming lessons until she finished elementary school, then joined the brass band club in junior high and played the trumpet. By the time she reached high school, she bypassed extracurricular activities altogether and joined the “go-home club.” “Since the kids around me weren’t joining clubs either, I figured it was fine not to,” she says, spending every day happily chatting with her friends.
Her encounter with pro-wrestling came during those high school years. Her mother had apparently been a fan back in her own youth, and together they went to watch the newly launched Kyoto Kasu Yaro Pro-Wrestling. She was hooked immediately.
“I had lived my whole life without ever watching combat sports, so seeing them flying around and crashing into each other made it feel like a world straight out of a movie.”
-HANAKO
“I had lived my whole life without ever watching combat sports, so seeing them flying around and crashing into each other made it feel like a world straight out of a movie,” HANAKO says. “It felt so extraordinary. Since my life revolved entirely around being in school all the time, it didn’t feel like reality—it was thrilling. I thought Shirokuma, who was competing as a guest from Kyushu Pro-Wrestling, was hilarious, and I really liked him. After that, whenever Kyoto Kasu Yaro Pro-Wrestling held a show, I would go watch.”
It was during this same period that she first encountered student pro-wrestling—the subculture that would become an inseparable part of HANAKO’s story. Learning that a student pro-wrestling club would be holding matches at the campus festival of Ritsumeikan University, where her cousin was a student (though her cousin was not actually a member of the pro-wrestling club), she went to check it out on a whim, thinking, “My cousin goes to that university, and I want to see pro-wrestling too.” When she arrived, students were genuinely wrestling in a ring set up right on the university grounds. Everyone looked like they were having so much fun, and the sight left a lasting impression on her.
Still, watching from the crowd did not mean she suddenly wanted to wrestle herself. At the time, she had no friends around her who liked pro-wrestling. Her thought process was simple: “If I join a college club like this, maybe I can make friends I can talk about pro-wrestling with. When I become a university student, I want to join one.”
After graduating from high school—and partly because she was not accepted into the universities she applied to in the Kansai region—she enrolled at Nihon University. Moving from Kyoto to Kanagawa brought stress from the sudden change in environment, though she gradually adapted. Looking into the collegiate wrestling scene, she discovered intercollegiate clubs that drew students from multiple universities, and one group caught her eye: the UWF Kanto Student Pro-Wrestling Federation.
When she checked UWF’s Twitter account, however, only male students were participating in practice. Unsurprisingly lacking the courage to jump in all by herself as the lone woman, she spent days agonizing over it until she spotted female members in the report photos posted later from their summer training camp. Mustering up her courage, she reached out to them and was welcomed into the group.
Because UWF was also recruiting backstage staff, she joined as a manager for the time being. At the same time, her upperclassmen encouraged her to become an in-ring competitor. Female wrestlers were a rare commodity in student pro-wrestling, and UWF had no one filling that role at the time. She never imagined that this invitation would end up changing the course of her life.
“Since I hadn’t played any sports at all in junior high or high school, I wasn’t even sure if I could do a forward roll,” HANAKO explains. “So I really didn’t have any intention of actually wrestling. Still, even though I think they meant it half-jokingly, my upperclassmen invited me every single time, saying things like, ‘Come on, let’s do pro-wrestling!’ In student pro-wrestling, even managers had to pay the admission fee at the municipal sports center where we practiced just to watch. Even if it was only a few hundred yen, when you’re a college student, that’s not cheap, right? Plus it cost train fare to get there. Chatting with the other managers during practice was fun too, but deep down I always had this feeling that maybe I wouldn’t mind moving around a little myself.”
In reality, doing forward rolls really did make her dizzy at first, but partly because “we didn’t do difficult things like walking on our hands; at first it was just basic movements,” she gradually acquired the fundamental skills of a student pro-wrestler step by step.
All of this took place during her freshman year, right before the world plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic. During her sophomore year, the university itself switched to remote classes, making it impossible for her student pro-wrestling peers to gather. As pandemic restrictions eased, they gradually resumed training. She made her pre-debut on December 12 of her sophomore year, followed by her official debut on March 14.
Before stepping into the ring, however, there was one rite of passage no student pro-wrestler could avoid: receiving a ring name. The name bestowed upon HANAKO was an homage to joshi pro-wrestler Risa Sera.
II. THE SHIN-KIBA VOLUNTEER
Her debut match took place at Wrestle Butokan, well known as the Ice Ribbon dojo. UWF held self-produced shows at a pace of once a month, and she debuted at one of those events—naturally, against a male student wrestler.
“It was a singles match against a classmate from my own rookie class,” HANAKO says. “I had this feeling that I had finally stepped into the world I loved, and I was so happy. Before the match started, I was unbelievably nervous, but once the bell rang I focused completely on the match, so I don’t think I was all that nervous anymore.”
For her offensive repertoire, acting on the advice of her upperclassmen, she studied tall female wrestlers—using moves employed by Saki Akai and Yuki Kamifuku as references. The big boot she uses today has been one of her signature moves since her student pro-wrestling days.
She could hardly be called the type who liked being the center of attention, yet HANAKO became more and more absorbed in the appeal of student pro-wrestling. She continued competing at UWF’s monthly self-produced shows, and during campus festival season she visited and wrestled at various universities at a pace of once a week.
“Just being able to step into the ring made me so happy,” she reflects. “It was also really fun how inter-club exchanges became so active, with us appearing at other groups’ shows and having them appear at ours. I got to wrestle against all kinds of upperclassmen and meet so many different people.”
Among those exchanges came an encounter with actual professionals. In April 2022, the hardcore and deathmatch joshi pro-wrestling unit Prominence launched. Because deathmatches and hardcore bouts take a long time to clean up after the matches conclude, one of her student pro-wrestling upperclassmen had signed up as a venue-cleaning volunteer for Prominence, and HANAKO was allowed to tag along and help out as well.
Naturally, that meant coming face-to-face with Prominence’s leader, Risa Sera, was unavoidable. HANAKO lined up at the merchandise table and timidly explained the situation regarding her student ring name, starting with, “Actually…” She wondered what she would do if Sera got angry at her, but Sera accepted it with a smile; apparently, Sera had already heard about HANAKO at the time.
As HANAKO continued going regularly to help out at Prominence shows, Sera approached her one day and asked, “If you’d like, why don’t you wrestle on one of our shows?” At Prominence’s 5th event at Shin-Kiba on August 28, 2022, a dream singles match against Risa Sera became a reality. Beyond that, she was blessed with the opportunity to compete regularly on their cards.
“Competing in Prominence made me incredibly nervous,” HANAKO admits. “On one hand I was thrilled, but on the other hand, I was stepping out there carrying the reputation of student pro-wrestling on my back, right? So I felt that pressure too. I had my match with Sera-san, and I also wrestled Miyako Matsumoto-san, Hiragi Kurumi-san, and Mochi Natsumi-san. With the pros, the way they fire up the crowd over the course of a match, and the precision of every single move, is on a completely different level. In student pro-wrestling we only had matches about once a month, so even the impact of a single strike felt totally different. I was simply overwhelmed.”
Jumping back slightly in the timeline, as she advanced in school year, it naturally became time to think about post-graduation employment. HANAKO started job hunting for the time being, but her heart wasn’t in it. Pro-wrestling was still what kept filling her mind.
“When I thought about what I truly wanted to do, the desire to challenge myself in pro-wrestling was always there,” she says. “There was also the option of getting a regular job and joining a working-adult amateur pro-wrestling group while working, but I’m really clumsy and single-minded, so I figured wearing two hats at once would be difficult for me. Also, if I turned 30 and suddenly thought, ‘I really do want to do pro-wrestling after all,’ starting at 30 would be too late, wouldn’t it? Once I thought about it that way, I realized it was better to take on the challenge while I was still young, so early in my senior year I made up my mind to turn pro.”
III. MAIKA’S LIFELINE & STARS
By the time she began appearing in Prominence, her resolve to turn pro was already set in stone, and she had her sights set on joining Stardom. Her reason was simple: “Because in my eyes, it looked like it was shining. I figured if I was going to compete, I wanted to test myself starting from the highest level.”
After successfully passing the Stardom audition, she commuted to attend training while working on her university graduation thesis. At the time in Stardom, the senior wrestler serving as trainer maintained a strict policy that “in rookie training, you cannot advance to the next drill until you clear the baseline strength-training benchmarks,” so HANAKO devoted herself endlessly to strength training. However, even after several months had passed and the date for her pro test was set, she still had not progressed past strength training—even though pro-wrestling and grappling techniques were also required in order to pass the pro test.
To make up for what they were lacking, HANAKO and her fellow trainees hurriedly joined the joint practices held by various Stardom units. Encouraging one another alongside her rookie classmates Aya Sakura and Komomo Minami (now in Marigold), she pushed through that grueling period.
She then passed the pro test “by the skin of her teeth,” and her debut was set for the first-ever NEW BLOOD big match. Booked in a tall tag team alongside Lady C, she stood across the ring from Maika and Himeka—MaiHime.
Around the time she became a Stardom trainee, she had gone to watch the final night of the 5STAR GP, where Maika and Himeka waged a fierce draw. That match had left the deepest impression on her heart, making her think, “They are so insanely cool,” so she was thrilled to be able to wrestle against the two of them in her debut.
Moreover, DDM had also been like teachers to HANAKO.
“At the time, I was allowed to participate in the practices of DDM, which MaiHime belonged to, and they were brutally tough,” HANAKO says. “Their leader Giulia-san was an incredibly stoic and disciplined person, and Maika also had that stoic judo mindset. Whenever they interacted with me, they were the ones who really drilled manners and ring etiquette into me.”
In her debut match, she fell to Himeka’s JP Coaster, and after the bout Himeka herself suggested to her, “Why don’t you use the JP Coaster after I retire?” The reason HANAKO still cherishes and uses this move today owes largely to the fact that it was passed down to her by Himeka, a senior who took great care of her, and that Himeka was Maika’s tag team partner.
Even so, when speaking of HANAKO, there is one unforgettable match: the final of the Rookie of the Year tournament in January 2024.
After losing the match, she poured out her frustration. Because Aya Sakura—her only remaining classmate after debuting—was out of action with an injury, HANAKO had been handling all the rookie chores entirely by herself. Swamped by both matches and rookie duties, she had gritted her teeth and endured all the way to that point, which made coming up short hurt all the more.
She sank into deep dejection. The one who reached out to her at that moment was Maika. Having Maika listen to everything she was going through helped calm her heart. Looking back, she feels anew that “Maika’s presence meant so much to me.”
Afterward, she formed the new unit E neXus V alongside Maika and others, and also teamed actively with Maika as the tag team Hai High Mate. Even after EXV dissolved, their tag team continued, and in September of this year they joined STARS together at the exact same time. Wrapping the Goddesses of Stardom Championship belts around her waist alongside Maika has become a major goal for HANAKO.
Three and a half years have now passed since her debut. In her own mind, she is living a pro-wrestling career that is “not going as smoothly as I had imagined.” She has held the Future of Stardom and NEW BLOOD Tag Team Championships. In this year’s 5STAR GP, she also advanced to the knockout finals tournament. Still, given her potential, it certainly would not be surprising if she had climbed much, much higher by now.
“Quite often I find myself thinking, ‘Who am I to step up?’ … But I’ve always known that as long as I’m in this industry, I can’t keep being like that.”
-HANAKO
“When I look at the people around me, there are quite a lot of people who charge ahead with an ‘it’s all about me’ attitude,” HANAKO admits. “I tend to step back and defer to others… Quite often I find myself thinking, ‘Who am I to step up?’ I’ve always been like that for as long as I can remember, so I’m used to it. But I’ve always known that as long as I’m in this industry, I can’t keep being like that. Now that I’ve joined STARS and my environment has changed, I want to push myself harder than ever before.”
She possesses a frame this grand. Her pro-wrestling is as dynamic and compelling as it gets. All that remains now is truly just confidence. When she acquires unwavering confidence in herself, HANAKO will become a massive presence to match her 181 cm stature.
Translation Notes:
- Early Life & Cultural Nuances
- Go-home club (Kitaku-bu): Japanese student slang for pupils who skip after-school extracurricular clubs to hang out with friends or head straight home after the final bell.
- Kyoto Kasu Yaro Pro-Wrestling: An independent Kyoto promotion whose name roughly translates to “Kyoto Scumbag Pro-Wrestling,” blending local pride with irreverent comedy.
- Shirokuma: A popular comedic powerhouse from Kyushu Pro-Wrestling whose ring name literally translates to “Polar Bear.”
- Student Pro-Wrestling & Prominence
- UWF Kanto Student Pro-Wrestling Federation: An intercollegiate club that borrows its acronym from the historic shoot-style UWF while running comedic and traditional student cards.
- The Risa Sera Ring Name: Following student wrestling’s tradition of dirty puns (shimoneta), HANAKO was dubbed “Seraferatio Risa” (セラフェラチオりさ), which is why she feared Sera would scold her.
- Pre-debut (Pure-debyū): A student wrestling custom where rookies work an unheralded trial or exhibition bout before their formally promoted debut match.
- Wrestle Butokan: Ice Ribbon’s home dojo and event venue in Warabi, Saitama, named as a playful pun on Tokyo’s famed Nippon Budokan.
- Working-adult amateur pro-wrestling (Shakaijin puroresu): Hobbyist pro-wrestling leagues for full-time daytime employees, distinct from Olympic freestyle or Greco-Roman amateur wrestling.
- Wearing two hats (Nisoku no waraji): Literally “wearing two pairs of straw sandals,” a classic Japanese idiom for balancing two demanding trades at once that HANAKO felt too single-minded to manage.
- Stardom Debut, Mentorship & Factions
- Trainee Classmates: Komomo Minami left Stardom before debuting (later joining Marigold), leaving Aya Sakura as HANAKO’s sole remaining debuted classmate.
- JP Coaster: Himeka’s signature spinning Argentine backbreaker drop, which she bequeathed to HANAKO right before her spring 2023 retirement.
- Rookie of the Year Final (January 2024): HANAKO lost the final to Yuzuki (now Victoria Yuzuki in Marigold) while shouldering all rookie arena duties solo during Aya Sakura’s injury hiatus.
- Hai High Mate (杯High Mate): Maika and HANAKO’s tag name combines hai (a sake cup, nodding to Maika’s hard-drinking Empress persona) with “High” (referencing HANAKO’s 181 cm stature).