The sad circumstances around the resignation of Japan’s best-known female rider sheds a sorry light on the JRA’s seemingly arbitrary ‘justice’ and its understanding of jockey wellbeing.
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Her image, character and achievements were valuable tools for the JRA marketing arm to utilise as it sought to increase female engagement with the sport. Fujita even carried the Olympic Torch ahead of the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, passing it to actress Tao Tsuchiya.
She gained an overseas profile, too, riding at the Shergar Cup in England in 2019 and again this past August, as well as contests in Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
Fujita was the JRA darling at home and abroad. But no longer, not since an old misdemeanour was resurrected in the low-brow Japanese entertainment weekly, Bunshun, and the JRA reacted with what looks for all the world like a ham-fisted attempt to ‘save face’ and be seen to be strong by responding with an ‘iron fist’ solution.
If much of the Japanese racing media coverage is an accurate reflection of public opinion, now her legacy is also that of a JRA rule breaker and there are plenty of commentators willing to beat her with it, while others prevaricate and fewer speak out in support.
Bunshun published an article on October 9, in which it claims it ‘confronted’ Fujita about a past breaking of JRA rules, in that she used a smartphone in the controlled area during jockey lockdown, known colloquially as ‘jockey jail.’ That is the time from 9pm on a Friday evening until the end of the usual two-day JRA racing weekend on a Sunday evening when jockeys are locked into a basic accommodation block together: communication with the outside world, even with wives, husbands, and children, is forbidden.
The timing of the article was hot on the heels of the suspensions on October 7 of two other JRA jockeys for breaking the smartphone/communication rule: Takezo Nagano and Shota Kobayashi were communicating by phone while both were in lockdown at different racecourses to each other.
On October 10, the governing body suspended Fujita and took the unusual move of referring her to the arbitration committee for punishment.
A day later, Fujita submitted her retirement notice. Trainer Yasuhiro Nemoto, Fujita’s ‘master’ and long-time mentor going back to her apprentice days, spoke to the press, reading out a statement from the jockey, in which she referred to her own absence from that press conference due to her ‘mental state.’ Nemoto said Fujita had ‘cried her eyes out’ as she wrote the resignation using his pen.
