TOKYO — It would be hard to find anyone more qualified to lead Japan’s national karate team than Rika Usami.
She is a third-degree black belt and won a 2012 world championship. She is a bona fide celebrity in the sport, with videos of her performances racking up tens of millions of views. She even wrote a dissertation on the art of punching.
Yet with karate making its Olympic debut in Tokyo, her sudden elevation in May shook the sport in the land of its birth. Unlike her predecessors, she is young, female and willing to challenge the conventional wisdom of a discipline that is traditional, some would say, to a fault.