International Swimming Hall of Fame Honorees By Country (Japan)

Miho Takeda was born and raised in the Kyoto Prefecture on Honshu, Japan’s largest and most populous island. She began swimming at the age of five and turned to synchronized swimming two years later. She changed clubs at the age of thirteen to train under Masayo Imura, the national team coach and “Mother of Japanese Synchro.”

Masako Kaneko was born in Tokyo, Japan on April 17, 1944 and has contributed as both a swimmer and coach since the beginning of synchronized swimming in Japan.

Miya Tachibana grew up in Otsu, Shiga, Japan loving the water so much that by the fourth grade, she was competing in synchronized swimming. By high school, she was winning the Junior World Cham­pionships.

No other swimming coach has single-handedly developed, trained and organized a national team to Olympic and international prominence more so than Japan's Ikkaku Matsuzawa.

What Hall of Fame Olympic Champions Tracy Ruiz, Carolyn Waldo, Candy Costie, Michele Cameron, the Josephson twins, Sylvie Frechette and Kristen Babb were to the United States and Canada, the beautiful Mikako Kotani was to Japan.