A Record of One Man’s Love, Passion, and Lifelong Dedication to Myanmar’s Ancient Art of Bare-Knuckle Fighting
Based on original testimonies by Takuya Takamori, coordinator of the Myanmar-Japan Lethwei goodwill tournaments (2004–2017) and identifier of the Bagan Lethwei murals (2005).
The First Time He Saw Real Lethwei
Win Zin Oo was already a renowned coach who had produced multiple Lethwei stars and champions. He told Takamori that a tournament was coming up soon in the town of Hinthada, and invited him along. They left Yangon before dawn by car, drove for hours on unpaved dirt roads through choking clouds of dust, and at one point loaded the vehicle onto a boat to cross a great river. Also riding with them that day was a young promoter named Soe Than Win, who would later become another major figure in the sport.
In Hinthada, Takamori watched fighters like Saw Thae Myo and Saw Thae Aung compete in bouts where opponents appeared to be separated by more than ten kilograms in weight. Matches were fought bare-knuckle, with headbutts, to a degree of intensity he had never witnessed anywhere in the world.
“It was not at all the weak or technically backward martial art people in Japan imagined it to be,” Takamori would later recall. “It was incredibly advanced, strong, and beautiful. Furthermore, I received a deep impression that this was a sacred martial art.”
Back in Yangon, he went to Win’s gym, filmed the athletes at practice, visited the small house where they all lived together, and spoke with them at length through his new friend. He and Win were the same age. From that visit forward, they became, in Takamori’s own words, lifelong best friends.
Seven Years of Trying
Takamori returned to Japan carrying footage of Lethwei matches and VCDs purchased in Yangon. He dubbed them onto VHS tapes and sent them to Japanese combat sports organizations. He asked them to include Myanmar fighters in their events. He was turned down repeatedly. Partly because Myanmar fighters competed in weight classes under 75kg, which Japanese promoters rarely featured for foreign bouts. And partly because Takamori was, as he readily admits, “a complete amateur in the world of combat sports.”
For years he could not bring himself to tell Win what he dreamed of. He began to wonder whether his vision of a Myanmar-Japan exchange built around Lethwei was simply impossible for an amateur like him. Then the idea came from Myanmar which proposed that Japanese fighters come to Myanmar.
The task of finding those fighters fell to Takamori. For Japanese fighters, Lethwei rules were entirely new. No gloves, only bandages, and even headbutts, which had been banned in all previous combat sports tournaments… because of these harsh rules, it was difficult to gather fighters.
Then Takamori remembered a man from his own hometown: Masami Ozaki, president of the mixed martial arts organization PANCRASE. Ozaki connected him with Mitsuru Miyata of the All Japan Kickboxing Federation, who put out a call for participants.
Two organizations answered: Wajutsu Keishukai, headed by Yoshinori Nishi, and Tanaka-juku, directed by Kenichi Tanaka.
Takamori reflected on the fighters who agreed to participate, “The reason for their participation was not the fight money. For Japanese fighters at that time, the purse was low, an amount you could earn in a single day at a part-time job. Those four fighters didn’t come for money; they came for the challenge of a ferocious martial art from an unknown country, unique to that land, where even headbutts were allowed, and which had a traditional status that could be called a national sport. Furthermore, it was a formal national event, something no Japanese person had ever experienced.
It was the spirit of challenging the unknown that moved them. Just like me, it was because the “unknown mountain” standing before them was high. I felt that the higher the mountain, the more their spirits rose with the sense of responsibility and the desire to overcome it.”
Throughout those seven years of endeavor, Takamori funded his repeated trips to Myanmar by cutting back on his own living expenses. He was not, as he says plainly, a wealthy man. Yet he was determined to climb this mountain.
Myanmar vs. Japan: July 2004
The first international goodwill Lethwei tournament – Myanmar 4-on-4 Japan vs. – was held on July 10 and 11, 2004, at Thuwunna National Indoor Stadium in Yangon. It had taken seven years to realize.
“When I received the news from Win that the event was confirmed,” Takamori has said, “I was so happy that I danced with joy.”
The preparation had been a saga in itself. As it was in the early 2000s, compared to current times, global internet and communication infrastructure was so limited that photographs could only be sent if they were under 200 kilobytes. Takamori and Win had to rely on expensive international phone calls that would disconnect after thirty to sixty seconds, requiring hours of attempts to reconnect. There were also difficulties with exchanging fighter data materials.
The team that traveled to Yangon was formidable in spirit if not by industry standard. Legendary martial artist Toshio Fujiwara – the first foreigner ever to become a Muay Thai champion, a man Takamori had admired since childhood – served as team leader and provided guidance to the fighters before their bouts. The Japanese delegation went 1 win, 2 losses, and 1 draw.
The tournament was covered by Japanese mass media and reported extensively in combat sports magazines. A TV crew captured the story of a twelve-year-old Myanmar boy named Nge Nge, a student at Lethwei Golden Belt Champion Moe Palel’s gym, who competed in the junior division. The resulting feature, broadcast on Hodo Station (TV Asahi), recorded the highest viewer ratings in the program’s history. Myanmar, and Lethwei, suddenly became known across Japan.
“Myanmar had become known in Japan through the traditional martial art of Lethwei,” Takamori reflected. “The joy was enough to make me forget the seven years of hardship leading up to the event.”
