The 2024 World Champion at -90kg is Goki Tajima. The 2025 World Champion at -90kg is Sanshiro Murao. And who did Murao beat to win that gold? None other than his teammate and rival, Tajima.
When a country has two really top players in the same division, it can be considered a “good problem”.
While it’s possible to send two players in the same division to the World Championships, for the Olympics, each country can send only one player per division. So, who’s it going to be?
To date, Murao and Tajima have fought each other in three IJF events: 2024 Tokyo Grand Slam, 2025 World Championships, and 2025 Tokyo Grand Slam. In all three cases, Murao came up tops.
Murao is also No. 1 in the IJF World Rankings while Tajima is No. 3.
All this would indicate that Murao is the main Japanese player in the -90kg division. But something happened last month that may have changed that perception.
At the 2026 All-Japan Open Weight Championships, Murao and Tajima both made it to the final. And there, Tajima defeated Murao, scoring waza-ari with sumi-gaeshi in the dying seconds of the 8-minute match (All-Japan rules differ from IJF rules).
Tajima’s victory there is a big deal in Japan, where the All-Japan’s is considered to be on par with the World Championships and even the Olympics.
“Since weight-class competitions are the norm worldwide, the All-Japan Championship is extremely valuable,” said Kosei Inoue, a former World, Olympic and All-Japan champion. “Its competitions embody and convey the traditions and elemental appeal of judo, which began with only open-weight competition.”
After their match ended, Murao and Tajima bowed and approached each other to shake hands, which is not very common in Japanese domestic competitions, where player tend to just bow and leave the mat.
This shows the tremendous respect each had for the other. Notably, in 2003 when Inoue defeated his teammate and rival Keiji Suzuki (also a World, Olympic and All-Japan champion), he also walked over and shook Suzuki’s hand.
It’s very obvious that both Murao and Tajima will get enough points to qualify for the 2028 Olympics. So, how will the Japanese federation decide who to pick?
A lot of it could depend on how they do in future World Championships. It will be interesting to see if Tajima can follow up his All-Japan win with another victory over Murao in the 2026 Worlds.
