It hasn’t been the greatest past couple of weeks for me, but I’m back with another TJPW translation! This is a (long overdue) post about TJPW’s May 5 show (recap here).
First, a few other wrestling things: I don’t really have much of an update on Kota Ibushi’s situation, unfortunately. He seems to be doing okay, at least for now, but his status with NJPW (and with wrestling in general) is still to be determined.
On a brighter note, the independent joshi freelancer group Nomads had their first show, and it was a great success! Highly recommend getting the PPV and checking it out if you want to support independent women’s wrestling in Japan. The Nomads twitter account has a live translation thread from Mr. Haku if your Japanese is not quite up to the task. Another highlight from this show is that the crowd could vocalize (with masks still required)!
Regarding the TJPW show, apparently they’d tried to do a show at the same arena in September 2020, but covid prevented it from happening, so this was their first time doing a big show in Osaka (it’s big by TJPW standards).
The main event was a pretty fun best of three falls match between team “Class of 1998” (consisting of four rookies) and a team made up of all of the current champions (with Rika, a past Princess of Princess and tag team champ, filling in for Yuka, who is currently in the United States). Naturally, the rookies pretty much got destroyed, haha, but the match was still entertaining. Rika caused trouble because of her unrequited crush on Mizuki, which sort of made things awkward for the champion team.
Afterward, Yuki Arai said: “届かない壁というか、先輩たちの強さを感じたんですけど、私たちも強くなって、“そういえば、私たちもボロボロにされてたよね”って言えるくらい成長していきたいと思いました.” This part was confusing to me. I think I understand everything up until the third comma. This was my best attempt at a translation: “We also want to to grow stronger so that we can say something like, ‘that reminds me, they used to beat us to a pulp, too.’” I wasn’t entirely sure what point she was trying to make. I guess she wanted to someday be able to reassure future rookies that she was once in their spot?
The other thing that confused me was part of Shoko’s comment afterward. The recap and the caption on the actual video seemed to be in slight disagreement with what she was actually saying 
.
The recap:
（1998年度組は）打たれ強さもですけど、自分たちの得意技でモタモタしないですよね。その辺の素早さとか。こっちはいっぱい手数はあるけど、一瞬を見逃さないというか…
The tweet:
（98年度組のすごかった部分は？）自分たちの得意技にもたもたしない。こっちは手数はいっぱいあるけど、向こうは自分の持っているものを一瞬も見逃さない力を感じました
The recap makes it sound like she’s saying that the champion team has a lot of moves, but they never pass up an opportunity, but the way the tweet words it, it makes it sound like she’s saying that the champion side has a lot of moves, but she felt the other side’s power was not wasting a single second with what they had.
The other important thing to come out of the main event is that Shoko and Hyper Misao challenged for the tag team titles! Mizuki accepted their challenge on behalf of herself and Yuka (who was not there). Afterward, Mizuki commented that Yuka is the kind of person who thinks about other people rather than herself, so even if Yuka says no, if Mizuki says that she wants to do it, then Yuka will say that she understands. They trust each other, so even though Mizuki decided on her own, the feeling is both of theirs.
It’ll be a really tough match for me to pick a side in, because I love Shoko and Misao’s team and they absolutely deserve to win the tag titles, especially after their recent feud over the singles title, but MagiRabbi are my favorite tag team in the company, and I don’t want them to lose…
The other match covered in the recap was Saki Akai and Kamiyu vs Miyu Yamashita and Miu Watanabe. Saki Akai rarely makes appearances in TJPW (it’s more common to see Sakisama), so it was fun to see her here. She and Kamiyu have a lot in common, so they make a good team. I actually really like Miyu/Miu as a team as well, haha, though I don’t often get chances to enjoy them together because both of them have a more regular tag partner.
Kamiyu managed to get the victory, thanks to Saki’s help, which sets her up pretty strongly for the 4way match at CyberFight Fest to determine the number one contender for the next Princess of Princess title shot.
After the match, Saki said that she met Kamiyu at a big DDT show when she wasn’t even a trainee, and from that moment, Saki thought, “I’d love to see a cute girl like her do pro wrestling.” Kamiyu is tall like she is, and Saki wondered if she’d be looked at the same way after her debut. She didn’t want a repeat of what she had been told after her own debut, so she privately worried about her. But after tagging with her at this show, she can see that Kamiyu’s moves, stamina, and power have changed since their last singles match, and if they have the opportunity, she wants to link up with her and fight her again. She says that she wants to keep watching over her, like a sister who lives next door.
Kamiyu echoed some of those same sentiments in her own comments. She said that around when she was a trainee, or maybe even not quite yet, she saw a pamphlet and thought, “this is such a beautiful person.” She said that even though Saki is a DDT wrestler, she gives her advice. She wanted to be someone worthy of standing at her side, and after five years of experiencing that desire, it finally came true. Teaming up with Saki, she was able to get a win from an opponent whom she normally couldn’t beat, which gave her a lot of confidence. She wants to keep evolving so that the two of them can work together again.
Miyu said that she thought if she and Miu had been able to work together better, they could have won. But she thought it was fun having a match with Saki for the first time in a while. She said: “忘れた頃に赤井さんと試合することが多くて、お互いがやってきたものを答え合わせするような感じで楽しかった.”
This part was hard for me to figure out how to translate, haha. Here was what I went with: “I’ve forgotten a lot about Akai-san even though we’ve had many matches together, and it was fun to check in on each other and see what the other person has been up to, like verifying answers on a test.”
Miu’s comment also confused me, but I think I read it enough times, I was able to finally make sense of it. She said: “赤井さんと初めて対戦して、DDTで美しい闘い方をしていると思っていて、今日は美しく開花させることはできたけど、上福さんの熱い思いに負けました.”
I think this is what she basically said?: “I thought that Akai-san, whom I faced for the first time, had a beautiful style of fighting in DDT, and although I was able to make the flower bloom beautifully today, I lost to Kamifuku-san’s passion.”
I was a little bit confused at first if she was saying that she faced Saki for the first time in DDT, which I don’t remember happening (though it could’ve been before my time), but I think she’s just commenting that Saki’s fighting style in DDT is beautiful. I think the blooming flower is a reference to her blooming giant swing move, but I’m not exactly sure I translated the last part right, about Kamiyu’s passion .
One last thing: this wasn’t covered in the recap, but Mahiro Kiryu had a singles match with Yuna Manase from GanPro. In her comments afterward, Mahiro used this verb: ふっ飛ばす, which Yomichan tells me means to blow off something or brush away one’s worries, or dispel, or carry out a task very quickly. She said that she challenged Yuna with the feeling of wanting to ふっ飛ばす, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to translate this word, haha, especially since she was using it in reference to a 壁 metaphor. “Blow away” just didn’t seem to be quite the right verb, though I did like the sort of double meaning it has in English, where Mahiro probably wants to impress Yuna as well as defeat her. Maybe it’s fine?
And that’s all I have to say about that show! There’s one more that I haven’t translated yet, but there isn’t a lot for me to have to do for that one. A lot of TJPW activity lately has been happening outside of the company and outside of Japan, haha.