About Hajime Miura
Hajime Miura (三浦 元) began playing yoyo in elementary school around 2010–2011 in Hachioji, Tokyo. He joined a yoyo club as a child and developed quickly into one of the sport’s most prodigious competitors. By 2014 — at approximately 11 years old — he won Japan Nationals, the Asia Pacific championship, and then the World Championship in 3A, defeating three-time defending champion Hank Freeman and becoming one of the youngest world champions in the contest’s history.
During his early years he was sponsored by sOMEThING, a Japanese brand, competing with their Phaser, Jet Set EC, Jet Set EX, and Anglam ver.CC models. He joined Yoyorecreation around 2020, and in December 2021 his first signature model — the Autoscopy — was released simultaneously as a bimetal and offstring throw of identical shape, reflecting his dual-division 2018 championship win.
Miura ran an extraordinary streak of six consecutive 3A world titles (2014–2019), and in 2019 became the first player to win five of the six contested divisions at a single WYYC. With no in-person contest from 2020–2022, he stepped back from the top of the podium before returning to claim 3A gold in 2023 at Osaka, and again in 2025 at Prague for his eighth world title.
His 3A style is known for extensive whip techniques, rejection elements rare in two-handed play, and complex simultaneous string combinations. Off-stage he is described as quiet and considered, training counterintuitively by reducing practice sessions as competitions approach. “People often call me a ‘genius.’ But in reality, I was once someone who couldn’t even spin a yo-yo,” he told Still Genius in 2024.
