Jun Mizutani

Jun Mizutani did something rarer than winning: he changed how a whole country looks at a sport. Born in Iwata, Shizuoka in 1989, he was Japan's youngest national champion at seventeen and then won five consecutive national titles from 2007 to 2011 — the first Japanese man to do it. That run happened while table tennis in Japan was still shaking off its reputation as a modest school-club activity rather than something you watch on prime time. He competed at four straight Olympics, 2008 through 2020, and finished with gold in Tokyo before retiring. I find the shape of that career more impressive than any single result. Staying at the top of a sport for well over a decade means absorbing years of being the person everyone measures themselves against, and doing it in a discipline where a match can turn on a few centimetres of spin. He was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his contribution. Ending on the highest possible note is the part almost nobody gets to script.

Name (English)

Jun Mizutani

Name (Japanese)

水谷隼

Reading

みずたに じゅん

Born

June 9, 1989 (age 37)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Snake

Origin

Iwata, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

table tennis player

University

Meiji University

Awards & achievements

• Medal with Purple Ribbon

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/mizutani_jun0609/
• Xhttps://x.com/Mizutani__Jun
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun%20Mizutani
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E8%B0%B7%E9%9A%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1332747

Tags

• Shizuoka Prefecture
• table tennis player

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.