3rd October 2026 – (Tokyo) Akane Araki, a former Japan badminton international, said she left the sport in 2020 to pursue a career in livestreaming despite family opposition, explaining the move was motivated by money and a desire to chart her own path. In an interview with Bunshun Online, Araki, who stands 176 centimetres tall, recounted leaving her family home for Tokyo, where she rented a small flat in the Tobu‑Nerima area for 60,000 yen a month and began building an online presence that now brings in monthly income reportedly as high as 16 million yen.
Araki said she chose livestreaming because she believed stable earnings in badminton were difficult to secure and the sector’s growth during the pandemic presented an opportunity. She added that performing had long appealed to her and that the shift was both a practical decision and a personal ambition. Her mother, herself a former badminton champion, had urged her to abandon livestreaming and consider language study leading to sports commentary, but Araki declined, insisting she wanted to pursue a different route.
Reflecting on her sporting life, Araki said she had competed from the age of seven yet never truly enjoyed the intensity of elite competition, admitting she sometimes felt distress when seeing opponents lose. She trained hard, she said, to meet the expectations of her mother and coaches and, later, to honour national team duties. While grateful for what badminton gave her, she suggested she may not have liked the sport itself and decided after retirement to set it aside entirely.
Addressing public interest in her appearance, Araki said she has leveraged her looks as a professional asset in livestreaming but emphasised she has not undergone cosmetic procedures. She attributed changes in her appearance to weight and body‑fat variations since her playing days, noting her current physique reflects a different stage of life rather than surgery.
