Hiroji Satoh
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | SATOH Hiroji | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Japan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | February 3, 1925 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | June 4, 2000 (aged 75) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Table tennis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Hiroji Satoh (佐藤 博治, Satō Hiroji; 3 February 1925 – 4 June 2000) was an international table tennis player from Japan.
Table tennis career
From 1952 to 1953 he won two medals in the singles and team events in the World Table Tennis Championships and four medals in the Asian Table Tennis Championships. Hiroji was the first person to use a sponge on his racket, a common feature of all modern table tennis rackets. Although at the time it may have seemed as though this technological advancement gave him an unfair advantage, it truly brought table tennis into the modern age as the Olympic sport it would become.[1]
He won bronze medal in the team event at the 1952 World Table Tennis Championships[2][3] and a gold medal in the men's singles at the 1952 World Table Tennis Championships.[4]
When Hiroji Satō lent his name to advertising purposes in the early 1950s, he was banned for life by the Japanese Table Tennis Association. According to the prevailing view at the time, this commercialization contradicted the amateur status of the sport. [5]
Satoh was the chief basis for Koto Endo (played by Koto Kawaguchi), the arch nemesis and fellow table tennis player of the protagonist in the 2025 American film Marty Supreme.[6]
See also
References
- ^ "SATOH Hiroji (JPN)". ITTF. Archived from the original on 2017-08-18. Retrieved 2017-04-14.
- ^ Montague, Trevor (2004). A-Z of Sport, pages 699-700. The Bath Press. ISBN 0-316-72645-1.
- ^ Matthews/Morrison, Peter/Ian (1987). The Guinness Encyclopaedia of Sports Records and Results, pages 309-312. Guinness Superlatives. ISBN 0-85112-492-5.
- ^ "Table Tennis World Championship medal winners". Sports123. Archived from the original on 2018-09-22. Retrieved 2018-02-28.
- ^ Uzorinac, Zdenko. ITTF 1926–2001 – Table Tennis legends, pages 100-102. ISBN 2-940312-00-1.
- ^ Surrey, Miles. "A Ping-Pong-Specific Review of 'Marty Supreme'". The Ringer. Retrieved 27 December 2025.
External links
- Hiroji Satoh and the first sponge rubber 1952 on YouTube
- Spongers Seldom Chisel on Sports Illustrated