Back in February, as the sun set behind the putting green at Royal Golf Club during the DP World Tour’s Bahrain Championship, I found myself debating with a caddie acquaintance about which of Japan’s exciting quartet of young golfers will go furthest in the game.
Might it be Keita Nakajima, the one-time world No. 1 amateur who, though we did not know it then, soon would win the Indian Open? Or what about Ryo Hisatsune or Rikuya Hoshino, both recent winners on the DP World Tour? Or maybe Takumi Kanaya, another former world No. 1 amateur, and a four-time winner in Japan and Asia in the past year?
Our thoughts followed the usual path, utilising knowledge, observation, anecdotes and statistics before I rather rashly wondered out loud what blood type the four of them might be.
“What on earth are you talking about?” the caddie asked with a look that suggested that any credibility I had earned in the previous 15 minutes had disappeared in a second.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
A long and intriguing one that is especially ripe for the telling as the tour makes the journey to the Land of the Rising Sun for this week’s ISPS Handa Championship at the Taiheiyo Club in Gotemba, 70 miles southwest of Tokyo.
The tale began for myself around 15 years ago when I noticed that a curious detail is included in every player profile on the Japan Golf Tour website: Blood type.
There are few rabbit holes I am not eager to disappear down, and this was no different. Few, however, have proved to be quite so rewarding.
“Blood type B is often said to be good for athletes as they are meant to be more selfish whereas blood type O have leadership qualities.”
Kozo Matsuzawa
I quickly discovered that a notion of blood type being a predictor of character had emerged in Japan during the 1920s and then, five decades later, it had been popularised by journalist Masahiko Nomi whose best-selling book “Understanding Affinity by Blood Type” was the first of 30 he would write and eventually led to his creation of the Institute of Blood Type Humanics.
An engineer by training, Nomi had no medical qualifications to speak of, yet his theories had a more or less immediate and profound effect on Japanese society. Major companies have used his ideas to recruit; government ministers have blamed errors on their blood-type failings; sports teams have customised blood-type training programmes; and dating agencies use the information to pair clients.
There is even a murky element to the theory known as “bura-hara,” a form of blood type harassment that includes bullying among children and discrimination in the workplace.
Kozo Matsuzawa, a journalist and translator who works for the R&A at the Open, told me: “It’s a big thing in Japan. I would say it’s even bigger than star signs. Blood type B is often said to be good for athletes as they are meant to be more selfish whereas blood type O have leadership qualities.”
This news prompted a return to the Japan tour’s player-profile page with the names of the nation’s best-known golfers written on my notepad and a pencil ready to add their blood types.
What about the trailblazing Tommy Nakajima, so popular throughout the golfing world during the 1970s and ’80s? He’s blood type O.
Isao Aoki, the first Japanese winner on the PGA Tour at the 1983 Hawaiian Open? He’s B.
Next up was Masashi “Jumbo” Ozaki, the most successful golfer of all-time on the Japan Tour with 94 wins and 12 Order of Merit titles. He’s also B.
His brothers Naomichi (“Joe”) and Tateo (“Jet”)? Also B.
The three-time PGA Tour winner Shigeki Maruyama? Another B.
Two-time major-championship top-four finisher Shingo Katayama? Yet another B.
The superstar who never made it, Ryo Ishikawa? O.
Japan’s first major-championship winner, Hideki Matsuyama? Err, B.
This felt extraordinary. Seven of the nine best-known names in Japanese golf were B, so the next obvious question was: Is blood type B simply the most common in Japan?
It turns out that it isn’t. In fact, according to multiple sources only 20 percent of the population is B.
I wasted no time messaging another Japanese friend, Shin Hirose (who ran a golf clothing brand), asking him which blood type might be deemed best for golf.
“Blood type B,” he wrote in a wonderfully straightforward reply. “We know that.”
So, what are the typical traits of blood type B? One Google search indicated that B blood types are “specialists, individualists, goal-orientated, selfish,” and you might suggest such characteristics are typical of – and possibly very desirable in – a professional golfer.
But other sources suggest B traits are “empathetic, passionate, selfish, erratic,” which – the repetition of selfishness aside – feels less like a description of a successful golfer.
Two further questions begged to be asked. The first – what are the blood types of Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Ben Hogan? – is, alas, beyond the reach of internet search engines.
But I could refer to the website of the JLPGA to see if the peculiar bias toward B also exists in the women’s game.
I was able to identify the blood type of seven of the eight Japanese golfers with multiple wins on the LPGA, and also that of Hinako Shibuno, one of only two women’s major winners from Japan (the other, Hisako Higuchi, is one of the seven).
On the one hand, the results poo-poo the theory: Only two of those eight are blood type B.
But get this: The two are Ayako Okamoto and Ai Miyazato who sit 1-2 on that list, with 17 and nine wins, respectively.
And, rather quirkily, Yuka Saso, the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open champion who represented the Philippines then and now plays under the Japanese flag, is also B.
What do academics make of the idea? Martin Maley is a senior lecturer in biomedical science at the University of Sunderland in England who specialises in haematology and blood transfusion. In a previous role at the National Health Service, he surveyed 1,500 from the blood-transfusion community to test the theory.
“We found there to be no statistical evidence of a relationship between any individual personality characteristic and any of the four blood groups,” he said. “There are as yet no credible scientific studies that can statistically link ABO type to personality traits.
“However,” he added, “it is worth pointing out that the 1,500 U.K. individuals have little or no exposure to the theories, books or expectations of what their blood type might demand. If a survey was performed in Japan, where a proportion of the population may already be living their lives according to these expectations, you might find a very different result.”
If nothing else, this is a remarkable story that provides an alternative theory as to why a golfer might struggle on the back nine on Sunday. Of course he or she flapped under pressure, such thinking might go. It’s written in their haemoglobin.
Just one question remained: Which of the four young hotshots will make it? (Drum roll, please.)
We have one winner. Hoshino and Kanaya are O, Nakajima is A, and only Hisatsune is B.
The 21-year-old from Okayama turned pro in 2020, won three times on the Japanese second tier in 2021, qualified for the DP World Tour at Q-School in late 2022, and last year won the Open de France, the Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year Award and a PGA Tour card. The Masters offered him one of three special invitations to compete in Augusta two weeks ago.
Remember the name and not necessarily because of all those achievements, rather because of what is running through his veins.
E-MAIL MATT
Top: Ai Miyazato; Keita Nakajima
ATSUSHI TOMURA, GETTY IMAGES; Luke Walker, Getty Images