Spun Silver said:I just hope never to learn that all these children were separated from their families at age 5 in order to make great skaters out of them.
Well, I cannot be sure about all of the skaters, but I don't feel it was the case.
I know that Nobunari Oda decided to become a skater out of his own free will; he wanted to follow in his mother steps (who was also a skater, and become a coach after she got married). Quoting his mother, he had complete ZERO of talent, and at some point she even suggested that maybe he should give up the competetive skating, as Nobu didn't seem to have much success at it. However, quoting Nobunari, he felt that he couldn't give up just yet.
And it's a good thing for japanese figure skating that he didn't, because he started winning soon afterwards. After he started being coached by Lee Barkell he literally skyrocketed in the world standings, suddenly winning the Junior Worlds and placing 3th at Japanese Nationals.
"We don't need to push him, he pushes himself", as Lee said at some point.
Oh, and when you said about the world domination, it made me think about a funny interview I recently watched. In the interview Noriko, Nobunari's mum, said jokingly that It would be good if the 17th descendant could carry out the dream which couldn't be accomplished by his ancestor. Nobu, while laughing, replied that he'll do his best to dominate the world.
Takahiko Kozuka, the current World Junior Champion, also comes from a skating family. He seems to be very enthusiastic about the skating as well.
...If I'm going to write about every single skater, this post will never end.
To cut the long story short, I'll just say that the only skaters that i've seen being visibly upset about their training were Miki Ando and Shizuka Arakawa.
Miki at some point even said that she doesn't "love" skating, and, sadly, I think it shows. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Shizuka mentioned that the stretching exercises were painful for her... I think she was actually more upset about the competetive aspect of skating (and the stress and hectic training that comes with it) than about the skating itself, though. Now, when she became a pro, she does her best to promote figure skating. She said that it is sad that so many rinks in Japan, including the one where she started to skate, are gone; and she would like to do something to change that. Otherwise a lot of talent could go to waste, just because the young skaters will not have a place where they could train.
Getting back to the topic; I think it's extremely difficult to pinpoint what exactly are Japanese "doing right". Their top skaters are very much different from each other, having different abilities and different styles. There's genius skater Mao and genius of hard work Nobunari; there's Miki and Daisuke who bloomed early, and Fumie and Shizuka, who bloomed later. What has proven to be a great approach in the case of one skater (assigning a foreign coach to Oda), didn't work so well on other skater (Miki Ando).
What a lot of them has in common is the love for sport and determination - but all skaters should possess those qualities, shouldn't they?
Oh, and someone mentioned the surprising lack of success in dance/pairs as in contrast to the success of Japanese single skaters. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of Japanese boys is, well, of rather mediocre height, to put it gently. It would be difficult to find a partner short enough for them, I think.