Born in Japan to a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, Osaka has lived and trained in the United States since age three. She came to prominence at age 16 when she defeated former US Open champion Samantha Stosur in her WTA Tour debut at the 2014 Stanford Classic. Two years later, she reached her first WTA final at the 2016 Pan Pacific Open in Japan to enter the top 50 of the WTA rankings. Osaka made her breakthrough into the upper echelon of women’s tennis in 2018 when she won her first WTA title at the Indian Wells Open. Later in the year, she defeated 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams in the final of the US Open to become the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam singles title. Since 2018, she has won a Grand Slam singles title in four consecutive years.
Osaka has said, “My dad’s Haitian, so I grew up in a Haitian household in New York. I lived with my grandma. My mom’s Japanese and so I grew up with the Japanese culture too, and if you’re saying I’m American, I guess it’s because I lived in America,” Her Haitian grandparents only spoke to her in Creole [African/European language spoken in the Caribbean] because they did not know English, while her mother conversed with her in Japanese. Osaka elected for Japanese citizenship over American in 2019, with an eye on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. She said, “I always represent Japan when I play.” Osaka can understand Japanese, but is not very confident speaking the language. She has said, “I can understand way more Japanese than I can speak.” At press conferences, Osaka can take questions in Japanese but typically will answer them in English.
Osaka’s background is particularly unusual given that she represents Japan, a country that perceives itself as being very racially tolerant. In Japan, she is referred to as a hāfu, meaning that she is half-Japanese. Her Japanese grandparents did not initially accept her parents’ relationship. This led to her parents’ relocating from Hokkaido to the city of Osaka, where she and her sister were born. As a result, her mother had no contact with her family for nearly 15 years and Osaka did not get the chance to return to Japan until she was11 years old, nor did her grandparents initially support her parents for building their daughters’ lives around tennis. However, they later began to support Osaka as a tennis player following her unexpected upset of Sam Stosur in her WTA Tour debut. They were also proud of her in particular for winning the 2018 US Open.
Osaka had a shy, reserved personality in her early years on the WTA Tour. Her former coach Sascha Bajin was initially confused by her personality, saying, “I thought she was a little bit more of a diva because she didn’t talk much. She doesn’t really look at someone’s eyes, but that’s just because she was always so shy . Back then I didn’t know for what reason.” Osaka is also very frank and is regarded as having a dry sense of humour. During her 2018 Indian Wells Open victory speech, she began by saying “Um, hello … I’m Naom … oh never mind” and later noted, “This is probably going to be the worst acceptance speech of all time” after being worried about forgetting whom to thank, and appearing to nearly forget to thank her opponent Daria Kasatkina as well as one of her sponsors Yonex.
When Osaka was three years old, her family moved from Japan to Valley Stream, New York on Long Island to live with her father’s parents. Osaka’s father was inspired to teach his daughters how to play tennis by watching the Williams sisters compete at the 1999 French Open. Having little experience as a tennis player himself, he sought to emulate how Richard Williams trained his daughters to become two of the best players in the world, despite having never played the sport. François remarked that “the blueprint was already there. I just had to follow it,” with regard to the detailed plan Richard had developed for his daughters. He began coaching Naomi and Mari once they settled in the United States. In 2006, Osaka’s family moved to Florida when Naomi was eight years old so that they would have better opportunities to train. Naomi practiced on the Pembroke Pines public courts. When she was 15 years old, she began working with Patrick Tauma at the ISP Academy. In 2014, she moved to the Harold Solomon Tennis Academy. She later trained at the Pro World Tennis Academy.
Although Osaka was raised in the United States, her parents decided that their daughters would represent Japan. They said, “We made the decision that Naomi would represent Japan at an early age. She was born in Osaka and was brought up in a household of Japanese and Haitian culture. Quite simply, Naomi and her sister Mari have always felt Japanese so that was our only rationale. It was never a financially motivated decision nor were we ever swayed either way by any national federation.” This decision may have also been motivated by a lack of interest from the United States Tennis Association (USTA) when Naomi was still a young player. The USTA later offered Naomi the opportunity to train at their national training center in Boca Raton when she was 16 years old, but she declined.
Osaka was named a 2020 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year for her activism alongside the year’s other prominent activist sports champions LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, and Patrick Mahomes, as well as medical worker Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. She was also honoured as one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world in 2020 for her activism, having also been named to the list in 2019 for representing professional tennis well as an excellent role model and a major champion.
Osaka has been featured as the main character in a manga series published by Kodansha in Nakayoshi, a leading Japanese shojo magazine. The series is being drawn by Futago Kamikita and was made with the help of Osaka’s sister Mari. The first edition appeared in the February 2021 issue of the magazine, which was released in December 2020.
Osaka is in a relationship with American rapper Cordae..In 2021, Osaka became a co-owner of the North Carolina Courage in the National Women’s Soccer League, the top level of the women’s sport in the U.S.
–T.D’Souza [content mainly taken from the Internet] –Aug 2021
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