Interview and text by Wheelscene’s David McNamara

2019 heralded some significant moments in Soichiro Kanashima’s career as a pro skater. At the start of the year he was officially announced as a member of Them Skates and in September he left long-time sponsor Eulogy to ride for Dead Wheels. Then, in November, he took second place at Blading Cup in Santa Ana. He decided to one-up himself in 2020 by winning the Chimera A-Side Games in Japan and walking away with just short of $100,000 – $90,930, to be exact – making himself one of the highest earning bladers in the world. It would seem fairly safe to say that Soichiro’s legacy just continues to strengthen with each passing year, with three pro skates to his name and no reason to doubt the possibility of more, so it seemed like a good time to check in with the Japanese icon. We scheduled the interview shortly after the world went into lockdown due to coronavirus. Okayama, the region where Soichiro lives, was only mildly affected by the pandemic, with only 25 reported cases and no deaths, so life for him has pretty much carried on as normal.  

Ahead of the interview, Soichiro asked if we could do it over email instead of talking to each other. I told him that all the interviews on Wheel Scene are done via video call because the email question and answer format tends to feel bland and lifeless. He expressed concerns that his English wouldn’t be good enough, but I spoke to JP Primiano, who has visited Soichiro in Japan to film a short documentary for Butter TV, and he advised that it should be fine. It turns out that while Soichiro’s English is certainly better than my Japanese – because I don’t speak any – he has a very limited vocabulary and sometimes struggled to understand the questions. But he was incredibly patient and good-humoured about my relentless quizzing and we struggled through until we covered every topic. Unlike most interviews, this became less of an insight into his personality and more of a fact-finding mission – with Soichiro offering little bits of trivia about himself that I am sure some people are not aware of.

You can read the whole interview over at Wheelscene at the link below.