It would seem that, with wonderful female pairs skaters from Japan like Rena Inoue, Utako Wakamatsu, and Yuko Kawaguchi and a strong programme of singles skaters in both the mens' and ladies' divisions, that Japan would be able to come up with a few homegrown pairs teams that could do well on the world stage. It's seems like there are enough ladies in Japan who are interested, but it seems like Japan has to import men (Aleksandr Markuntsev, Alexei Tikhonov) to fill out the teams. So, why aren't the Japanese men interested? They're willing to do ice dance; Japan has at least three ice dance teams (granted, ice dance isn't as demanding as pairs).
I'm curious to know if anyone has any insight into this, because this baffles me
I'm curious to know if anyone has any insight into this, because this baffles me