Naomi Osaka, A Successful Athlete Becoming An Advocate of Mental Health

Naomi Osaka is a 24-year-old tennis player. She is a four-time Grand Slam singles champion and the reigning champion at the US Open and the Australian Open.

Who is Naomi Osaka?

"My name is Naomi Osaka. As long as I can remember, people have struggled to define me. I've never really fit into one description—but people are so fast to give me a label. Is she Japanese? American? Haitian? Black? Asian? Well, I'm all of these things together at the same time."

Naomi Osaka and her older sister (Mari Osaka) were both born in Japan before moving to New York City when Naomi was only three years old. They were raised in the United States but grew up in a multicultural household, with a Japanese mother (Tamaki Osaka) and a Haitian father (Leonard Francois).

Naomi held a dual Japanese and American citizenship up until 2019. Under Japan's Nationality Act, those who hold dual citizenship’s must choose one nationality before their 22nd birthday. She gave up her American citizenship she could compete for Japan in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

However, this wasn’t the only reason she gave it up. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Tamaki said her daughter has always identified as Japanese – “Quite simply, Naomi and her sister Mari have always felt Japanese, so that was our only rationale. It was never a financially motivated decision, nor were we ever swayed either way by any national federation.”

In the 3-part Netflix documentary series about her life, Naomi backed her own decision to renounce her American nationality by saying “I’ve been playing under the Japanese flag since I was 14, it was never even a secret that I was gonna play for Japan for the Olympics.”

She was taught to play tennis from a young age by her father. He would take both her and her sister to public courts near their home to practice. However, he does admit that he had no knowledge about technique and that he drew inspiration from the way Richard Williams taught his daughters (Venus and Serena William’s father) to play tennis. “The blueprint was already there. I just had to follow it.” Said Francois.

Mari also ended up competing as a professional tennis player. However, she played the majority of her career on the lower-tier ITF circuit and in March 2021 announced her retirement from Tennis altogether.

When it comes to Naomi’s personal life, she likes to keep private, especially when it comes to her relationship with American rapper Cordae Amari Dunstan. "We kind of move very reclusively. We don't really post intimate moments because I feel as though they're sacred". She also told GQ Magazine "a relationship is really a sacred thing. Once you let outside influences get into it, it becomes less sacred.”

What we do know about their relationship is that they met at a Los Angeles Clippers basketball game and went back again for their first date in April 2019. She has accompanied Cordae on some of his music tours and he has been known to support some of her tennis matches from the stands, despite previously mentioning that tennis is “not my sport”.

Why is Naomi Osaka an inspirational icon?

Naomi is an incredible athlete, a mental health advocate and a passionate activist.

She first became prominent in 2014 when she defeated former US Open champion, Samantha Stosur, in her Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour debut at just 16 years of age. In 2018 she reached the WTA final where she was defeated by Caroline Wozniacki. However, she still managed to break into the top 50 WTA rankings for the first time.

In the same year she won her first Grand Slam by defeating Serena Williams and became the first Japanese to contest ever win a Grand Slam final.

Since then, her winning streak has continued and in 2019 she was ranked as number one in the women’s tennis singles. In 2020 she was ranked as 29th in the list of the world’s highest-paid athletes!

Then in May 2021 Naomi made the huge decision to withdraw from the French Open. This was because of issues around her refusing to take part in media interviews due to the negative effect it was having on her mental well-being. She admitted that press events give her “huge waves of anxiety” and that she sometimes wears headphones to help drown everything out.

"I think now the best thing for the tournament, the other players and my well-being is that I withdraw so that everyone can get back to focusing on the tennis going on in Paris.”

However, she doesn’t take mental health advocacy lightly saying "I feel uncomfortable being the spokesperson or face of athlete mental health as it's still so new to me and I don't have all the answers. I do hope that people can relate and understand it's O.K. to not be O.K., and it's O.K. to talk about it.”