Kanako Murakami

Kanako Murakami is often remembered in Japan for her sunny personality, which does her competitive record a quiet disservice. Born in Nagoya in 1994, she won the World Junior title in 2010, took bronze at the Grand Prix Final in her first senior season, and became Four Continents champion in 2014. She also medalled at the Japanese national championships four times. That last detail is the one I'd underline. Japanese women's figure skating in those years was brutally deep — standing on that national podium repeatedly meant beating a field that could have won medals for almost any other country. What she never got was the single unambiguous trophy that fixes a skater in public memory, so the shorthand became her cheerfulness rather than her results. She is retired from competition now and works as a choreographer, which means her real contribution to the sport is still being written on the ice, just under someone else's name.

Name (English)

Kanako Murakami

Name (Japanese)

村上佳菜子

Reading

むらかみ かなこ

Born

November 7, 1994 (age 31)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Dog

Origin

Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Height

162 cm

Occupation

figure skater / figure skating choreographer

University

Chukyo University

• Official sitehttp://www.kanako-murakami.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/kanako_m_1107/
• Xhttps://x.com/Canyanpy1107
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanako%20Murakami
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%91%E4%B8%8A%E4%BD%B3%E8%8F%9C%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1132554

Tags

• Aichi Prefecture
• figure skater
• figure skating choreographer

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.