Photo: Mario De Biassi (Mondadori Publishers) / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Yukari Takemoto is one of those athletes who makes you appreciate the quiet, grinding side of competitive sports. Born in 1955 in Hiroshima — right in the middle of Japan's postwar economic surge — she came up as a competitive swimmer in an era when the sport demanded everything from you and handed back almost nothing in terms of public glamour. Swimming is brutally solitary: just you, the water, and the clock, lap after lap, year after year. That kind of discipline tends to produce people with genuine steel in them, and I'd wager she had plenty. She reached the Olympics at just 13, the youngest Japanese summer Olympian at the time, and later turned to local politics as a town councillor in Saka, which tells me that steel never left her.
This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.
Overview
Yukari Takemoto is a retired Japanese swimmer from Saka, Hiroshima Prefecture, born on April 27, 1955. At 13 she swam the 100 m and 200 m breaststroke at the 1968 Olympics, then the youngest Japanese competitor at a Summer Games, and she also competed at the 1972 Olympics. Now known as Yukari Nakagawa, she has served on the Saka town assembly since 2011, later as its vice-chair.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Yukari Takemoto
- Name (Japanese)
- 竹本ゆかり
- Reading
- たけもと ゆかり
- Born
- April 27, 1955 (age 71)
- Origin
- Saka, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan
- Occupation
- Competitive swimmer
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Taurus / Goat
2. Links
3. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.
Frequently asked questions
When was Yukari Takemoto born?
Yukari Takemoto was born on April 27, 1955 and is 71 years old.
Where is Yukari Takemoto from?
Yukari Takemoto is from Saka, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.
What does Yukari Takemoto do?
Yukari Takemoto works as Competitive swimmer.
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