Tomokazu Harimoto

Personal life Tomokazu Harimoto was born as Zhang Zhihe in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture. His father, Yu Harimoto (born Zhang Yu), and mother, Rin Harimoto (born Zhang Ling) are both former professional table tennis players from Sichuan, China. Rin Harimoto, at the peak of her career, represented the Chinese national team at the 1995 World Table Tennis Championships in Tianjin. Tomokazu's parents moved from China to Japan in 1998. His younger sister Miwa Harimoto is also a table tennis player.

Harimoto began playing table tennis at the age of two. To compete in the All Japan Championships, he needed Japanese nationality. Consequently, his father and sister chose to become Japanese citizens as well.

Career Junior career Harimoto first won the All-Japan Table Tennis Championships Juniors title in 2010 as a first grader. He would continue to win the tournament for all 6 years of his elementary school years. In 2015, he was chosen to represent Japan at the World Junior Table Tennis Championships in France, becoming the youngest Japanese player to be chosen. However, due to the November 2015 Paris attacks, Harimoto was not able to participate in the tournament.

Aged 12 years and 355 days, Harimoto defeated seasoned professionals Ho Kwan Kit, Hugo Calderano, and teammate Kohei Sambe to win the 2016 U-21 Japan Open title. With the win, he became the youngest winner ITTF World Tour under-21 men's singles title. He was just short of 15 years old when he won the title. Later in the year, Harimoto continued to win the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Incheon, South Korea, where he defeated Lin Gaoyuan 4-1 in the final and became the youngest-ever winner of the event. His outstanding performance in 2018 also helped him reach No.3 in the ITTF world ranking, his career best.

2020 Harimoto won third place at the 2020 World Cup. Harimoto led 3–1 against Ma Long in the semi-finals, but lost 4–3 after Ma Long called time-out in the fifth game and switched to a high-toss serve that Harimoto had trouble reading.

2021 In March, Harimoto played in WTT Doha. He was upset in the semi-finals by Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the WTT Contender event, but won the champion for the WTT Star Contender event.

In June, teammate Jun Mizutani said that Harimoto's mental game was steadily improving in 2021 and better than the previous year. Mizutani also positively noted that Harimoto was reverting to his more aggressive style of play in 2021.

Harimoto was upset by Darko Jorgic in the round of 16 of the men's singles event at the Tokyo Olympics. Originally slated to be the ace player in the team event, Harimoto ended up playing in doubles in Japan's 3–1 victory against Sweden in the quarter-finals. In the semi-finals, Harimoto won both his matches as the ace player against Germany, but Germany still won 3–2.

Records June 2016: Youngest ever winner of an ITTF World Tour under-21 men's singles title (12 years, 355 days). August 2017: Youngest ever winner of an ITTF World Tour men's singles title (14 years, 61 days). December 2018: Youngest ever winner of an ITTF World Tour Grand Finals men's singles title (15 years, 172 days).

Awards ITTF Star Awards: Breakthrough Star (2017)

Major tournament performance timeline +KeyWFSFQF#R (W) won; (F) finalist; (SF) semi-finalist, rank added if bronze medal match played; (QF) quarter-finalist; (#R) rounds 4, 3, 2, 1;(S) singles event; (MD) men's doubles event; (XD) mixed doubles event; (T) team event. Senior career highlights, as of 10 August 2026

ITTF/WTT career finals Singles: 28 (16 titles, 12 runners-up)

Men's doubles: 8 (4 titles, 4 runners-up)

Mixed doubles: 15 (8 titles, 7 runners-up)

Record against top-10 players Harimoto's singles match record against those who had been ranked in the top 10 :