It’s a little late, but I finished the translation for the first day of the Tokyo Princess Cup on July 16! Instead of finishing one show translation in two days I ended up with two half-finished show translations in two days 
. I’m hoping to get the next two finished before the next round of the tournament, but we’ll see…
Here’s the recap for day one.
A little bit of context that might help with this tournament is that Miyu Yamashita has actually never won the Tokyo Princess Cup in the nine years of TJPW’s existence. It’s a running joke that she does terribly in tournaments. I think it’s actually really clever booking because Miyu doesn’t really need a tournament win to establish her, so it gives other wrestlers more time to shine. We’ll see if this is the year that her tournament curse finally ends…
The main event on the first day was Hyper Misao vs Miyu. Miyu has actually already lost to Misao in this tournament, in 2016 (though Miyu beat her a few years later in 2020). Because of that earlier loss, Miyu was dreading facing her again, and called it a “くじ運が悪い” (unlucky drawing) when she found out who her first round opponent was going to be.
In the match itself, Misao started out by saying that she was going to do this “正々堂々” (fair and square) and shaking Miyu’s hand, but… as the recap describes it, “これは三味線だった.” I was a little confused what it meant by calling this a shamisen, but one of Yomichan’s definitions for 三味線 offered some clarity on this: “「―を弾く（＝相手に調子を合わせたり、適当なことを言ってごまかす）」”. I translated the line from the match recap as “this was all a deception.”
EDIT: It just occurred to me that I could translate this as “played her like a shamisen” as a bit of a riff on the English idiom “played her like a fiddle.”
Misao tried a bunch of tricks, including taping Miyu’s legs together to neutralize her kicks. But in the end, she wasn’t able to beat the ace, and Miyu took her out with a Crash Rabbit Heat, which is a move we haven’t seen from her in a while.
On the mic, Miyu said that she thinks Misao is the most difficult opponent in the tournament, so she’s happy to win. Next she’ll be facing Raku, who is also a formidable opponent (
). Every year, with each tournament, the young wrestlers get stronger, and the bar gets higher, but this is the year she’s going to win.
Backstage, Miyu talked about how when she found out that she had Misao in the first round, she thought she was in trouble. She says that she always felt weak when it comes to tournaments, but this time she felt confident. This line in the twitter caption confused me a bit: “今回は強気・強気でパミにどんなことされても勝つつもりで闘って.” I was a bit thrown off by the 強気・強気. Here was my attempt: “This time, I was confident, and I used that confidence to fight with the intention of winning no matter what kinds of things PaMi did.” (PaMi is Misao’s nickname. It comes from the “パーミ” in “ハイパーミサヲ”).
Miyu said that her legs were tied, and Misao was just getting stronger. There were some really close calls. For this reason, beating PaMi in the first round was huge. Next is Raku, who will also be a difficult opponent in terms of type, so if she can get past this point, she’ll feel better about her chances. Then she said: “一人ひとりしっかり相手して倒して今年こそ優勝したい.” This part confused me. Here’s my best shot at it: “But I will fight each and every one of my opponents and bring them down. This year, I want to win the whole thing.”
I thought it was funny that Miyu considered Raku to be a formidable opponent, considering, well… Raku does not have the greatest win-loss record, let’s just put it that way. But it’s true that Miyu isn’t really used to wrestling Raku’s style of match, just as Misao’s style isn’t really Miyu’s typical wheelhouse either. And if there was any time for Raku to get an upset victory against the ace, it would be now…
Miyu also talked about using Crash Rabbit Heat again. I couldn’t figure out this sentence in this part of her comment: “久しぶりにクラッシュ・ラビットヒートを出したけど、これじゃないと倒せないと咄嗟に出た技かなと.” I believe I’m missing some context, and also the negatives are a little tricky for me .
Miyu also explained why Misao is difficult to deal with. She said that the thinks Misao will be even more prepared next time. She thinks Misao is analyzing her, so from her perspective, she’s still a formidable opponent.
Misao pretty much confirmed that, haha. She said that she thought her Yamashita counterplan was flawless, but Miyu was still a monster. This line was a little tricky for me, mostly because of the ブーン sound effect: “あと少しで倒せるってところにきたと思ったら、急にブーンって。” This was my translation: “Just when you think you’re about to beat her, suddenly whoosh.” (I’m guessing she’s talking about the rush of air from the Skull Kick?)
Misao said (from the twitter caption): “山下さんモンスターでしたね。全部の引き出しを開けてもダメでした。でも私の夏はまだ終わりません。山下実優のデータベース、バッチリ入りましたので他の選手と闘う時に応用させてもらって、東京女子のランキング上位目指して頑張ります.” I translated this as: “Yamashita-san was a monster. I emptied out my entire toolkit, and it still wasn’t enough. But my summer isn’t over yet. I’ve hacked into the Miyu Yamashita database, and I will put it to use against the other wrestlers when we fight and aim for a higher spot in the TJPW rankings.”
The other match covered in the recap is the newly crowned tag team champ Yuki Arai vs Mahiro Kiryu. Arai was able to beat her senpai here (although beating Mahiro is not the most difficult thing to do ). Alas, no tag team title shot for 東洋盟友…
After the match, Arai said that last year, she lost in the first round and was unable to advance, but she won the tag belts last week in Ota Ward, and this year she wants to do her best to achieve results in the singles division as well.
Regarding her next round match with Hikari, she said that they’ve fought on a team together loads of times, but she’s never had a match with Hikari, so she’s an unknown and scary opponent. But she thinks it would be awesome if she could beat Hikari, so she’s going to do everything she can to win.
Mahiro said that Arai has gotten really strong since her debut, becoming champion at Ota Ward the other day. She said: “私はキャリアは上ですけど挑む気持ちで闘いました.” I couldn’t quite parse the second half of this. This was my attempt: “My career is longer, but I fought in the spirit of challenge.”
Mahiro thinks that Arai’s tenaciousness has grown, and she regrets that she couldn’t bring her down. She says that she knows she has to win not only for her own sake, but also for everyone who supports her, so starting tomorrow, she’s going to focus her energy and do her best.
Shoko Nakajima vs Haruna Neko was not covered in the recap, but was also a tournament match. Neko got… a little bit obliterated . She said that as expected, Shoko was strong, and she couldn’t do anything about it, but she hopes she can feed on this frustration to help her grow.
Shoko said that next she’ll face Mizuki, and Mizuki has been among the top four regulars for about two years, and she’s a formidable opponent, so Shoko wants to be even more consistent than she was today.
Concerning Neko, she said: “私は出し惜しみなくやったので、そこをどう受け取ってくれているかだと思います.” This line confused me. Here was my attempt: “She fought without holding back, and I think that’s how I received it.”
The other tournament match was Pom Harajuku vs Moka Miyamoto. I was excited to see Pom get the win! She… does not win often in TJPW, so it was fun to see her move on to round two. I realized for the first time when reading the recap that her finisher, the Pom de Justice, is written ぽむ・ど・じゃすてぃす. I’m surprised it’s not in katakana! This was my first time encountering a ぃ.
Moka said that this year, she really wanted to get through the first round and advance to the next, but she lost, which is really frustrating. She’s going to get stronger and do her best to beat her senpais.
Pom said that Moka is getting stronger, so she was anxious, but this summer of 2022, Pom also can’t lose, so she did her best and she won! Next is Suzume, who she’s never had a singles match with, so she’s not going to be careless, but she’s going full speed ahead!
And that’s it for that show!
Ideally I’ll have the next one done by tomorrow, and then hopefully I can finish the last one in time… There was actually a Tokyo Sports article published after the last show that went slightly viral in the international joshi fan community because of a DeepL mistranslation, which I’m very proud to say I was able to figure out on my own before anyone else shot down the unsubstantiated rumor, but I’ll get to that when I post about that show, haha.
It’s kind of strange realizing that in the post-DDT English Update twitter account world, I (and the readers of this thread) now understand more about what’s going on in TJPW than probably like 98% of their international fans who cannot understand any Japanese .
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But it’s a clear story and an interesting one so we’ll see where it leads.
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) herself the win. But it’s pretty big for Suzume to make it into the quarterfinals!
