NAGANO 1998	MARCH 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 8
	Medalists With Mettle By HANNAH BEECH /NAGANO hese aren't the kids you want to bring home to Mom and Dad. A blond braid snakes down ski-jumping double gold medalist Kazuyoshi Funaki's neck. World-record speed skater Hiroyasu Shimizu boasts a dye-streaked hairdo. Golden jumper Takanobu Okabe sports a chunky earring on his left ear. And surprise mogul champion Tae Satoya had the cheek to keep her hat on during the playing of the Japanese national anthem, covering her wind-swept hair but disgracing her country in the process. Japan doesn't quite know what to do with this miscreant bunch. Unlike the model sporting citizens of yesteryear who dutifully sweated for their country, these youngsters are full of attitude and increasingly compete not for nation but for themselves. Yet their medals are piling up: a record five golds, one silver and three bronzes. If the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and the Sapporo Games eight years later showed Japan could rebuild, Nagano is proving the nation can rock. Japan's athletes used to be a flag-waving bunch, but the national anthem was rarely the soundtrack to their Olympic history. The country didn't even win its first Winter Games gold until 1972, despite intense national pressure to bring home medals. Even those who did well still felt as if they had somehow failed. Midori Ito, who landed a figure-skating silver in 1992 and acted as torchbearer in Nagano's tradition-laden Opening Ceremonies, apologized to Japan for having missed the gold in Albertville. Others blamed the national burden for their Olympic chokes, including veteran ski-jumper Masahiko Harada, 29, whose puny Lillehammer leap in 1994 cost Japan the team gold. As did this year's heavily favored speed-skater Manabu Horii, 26. "I think the pressure got to me a little," he said, tears streaming down his face. "I'm very sorry for having let down my nation." Compare that to the new crop of Japanese Olympians, who are as cool as the ice and snow on which they compete. "The pressure doesn't get to me," says first-time Olympian Funaki, 22. "I have to compete for myself, not for my nation. Then the only person I will disappoint is myself. And I won't do that." Adds 23-year-old rink specialist Shimizu, whose determination to succeed consistently propels the diminutive skater past more powerful opponents: "I think my will to win is stronger than anyone else's. That's what makes me win. I block out everything else." Such talk has caused consternation among some Japanese fans. "We've come to cheer our athletes on," says Reiko Sakurai, 48, a housewife from Nakano, in central Japan. "Maybe they could be a little appreciative of our efforts." Others fear that insubordination among the younger ranks has tarnished their golden performance. Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) members blasted freestylist Satoya for her sartorial faux pas; JOC secretary general Yushiro Yagi publicly called it the biggest embarrassment of the Games, reassuring outraged Japanese, who bombarded the committee with letters, that she had been "severely reprimanded" the night she captured the gold. Satoya said she was sorry, but handlers still shepherded her away from fans when she played an impromptu game of rock-paper-scissors during a reception honoring Japanese Olympians. "It's not proper behavior for a medalist," said one of the handlers. A fellow Olympian thinks the officials were overly harsh: "Japan repays Satoya by yelling at her. She should just tell them that she'll keep the gold for herself and not share it with Japan." Tokyo psychologist Mayumi Ishikawa thinks this breezy attitude is more than hipster talk. "You can't compete for a whole nation," she said as she watched Harada flub yet another jump during the normal-hill event at the Games. (The flier redeemed himself with a bronze in the large hill and a clutch jump that ushered in a team gold.) "It's too mentally taxing, which is why the younger athletes are doing well. They know they have to insulate themselves from the Japanese fan pressure or else they will be destroyed." Tell that to the more than 40,000 spectators who crammed the Hakuba Ski Jumping Stadium, including a middle-aged man who held up a sign exhorting contestants to fly like the kamikaze fighter planes that carried out suicide missions during World War II. Such exacting expectations sometimes result in unintended tragedy. In 1964, marathoner Kokichi Tsuburaya was heading for a medal during the Tokyo Games, only to be overtaken in the homestretch and robbed of the bronze. Feeling he had let down his country, Tsuburaya committed suicide four years later at age 27. But for mogulist Aiko Uemura, who swung her cornrows--dyed in the Olympic-ring colors--around in jubilation at her seventh-place finish, medaling wasn't the reason she bumped down the slopes near Nagano. "Winning would have been fun," says the 18-year-old poster child for Japan's neon-tinged generation. "But this has been a great party. I even did my hair up, just for the competition."
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