Genko En exits the new king tournament and falls from the balcony

Makoto Hara’s withdrawal from the All Japan Rookie King Championship Match, followed soon afterward by his fall from an apartment balcony, marks the point at which a rising boxing career collided with the burden of his father’s crimes. The episode does not resolve whether the fall was deliberate: Hara described it as unintentional and said he could not remember what happened. What is clear is that he withdrew from the championship, was seriously injured, and vanished after leaving hospital. His club had hoped boxing might help him rebuild his life; instead, the crisis exposed how little a title, however hard won, could settle the past he carried.

A promising career and a difficult choice

After his mother moved away with him following the public exposure of Kenkichi Kobayashi’s crimes, Hara was recorded as living in an orphanage in Maebashi. Little was known about his subsequent life until he joined a boxing club in Kita-Senju, passed the professional test on his first attempt, and began advancing in the sport. He won the East Japan Rookie King Tournament at bantamweight, knocking out his opponent in the title fight. The victory brought attention, and his next scheduled contest was the All Japan Rookie King Championship Match.

His coach, Yanagisawa, remembered Hara as a talented boxer who was better than he was, though they competed in different weight classes and became close. Hara was not especially talkative, Yanagisawa recalled, but the club’s president, Kosuge, wanted to help him turn his life around and gain confidence through boxing. That hope gave the championship more weight than a sporting milestone: the people around Hara regarded success as a possible new beginning.

As the championship approached, Kosuge asked why Hara wanted to withdraw. It was then that Hara first spoke about his father. His hesitation was not simply fear that the boxing world would discover his parentage. The concern was whether he deserved the glory of the title while carrying the history of a murderer’s son, and whether he should speak with the victims’ family. The conflict turned achievement into a moral question that a victory in the ring could not answer.

The run and withdrawal

Yanagisawa recounted the crisis as a scene from a morning run they used to take together. When the pair reached a local park, Hara fell behind and stopped. He then dropped to his knees and collapsed onto his stomach, crying in the park. Yanagisawa went to him and urged him not to take part in the meeting with the victims’ family, reasoning that his presence might only make them uncomfortable. His advice addressed the immediate obligation, but it could not remove the larger conflict behind Hara’s decision.

Hara did not attend the meeting. Yanagisawa first said that he never went, then placed the fall from the balcony immediately after that moment in the story. The order is significant: the withdrawal was bound up with Hara’s distress, but the account does not establish a direct intention behind the fall. It preserves that uncertainty rather than turning a severe crisis into a simple explanation of motive.

The fall and its immediate consequences

Soon after the breakdown in the park, Hara fell from the sixth floor of his apartment building. He landed on the roof of the bicycle parking area below and survived, but suffered multiple broken bones and serious injuries. When asked whether the fall had been a suicide attempt, Yanagisawa answered that Hara had said it was unintentional and that he could not remember what had happened. Yanagisawa found an accidental fall difficult to accept because there was a railing, but believed Hara had not wanted to die; in his view, Hara had reached a point of desperation and needed an escape. He also thought Hara seemed relieved that the injury made it impossible to fight.

The account distinguishes Hara’s stated recollection from Yanagisawa’s interpretation. Neither turns the fall into a confirmed suicide attempt. Its concrete consequence, however, was certain: Hara had to forfeit the championship match. A sudden physical accident ended the immediate contest, while leaving the emotional crisis that had preceded it unresolved.

Aftermath and significance

Kosuge was shocked by the accident. Hara apologized, but disappeared after being released from hospital. The club president, who had wanted to help him become a champion and move beyond his suffering, blamed himself for a long time. Yanagisawa later observed that Kosuge had returned to his former self, but that remembering Hara remained painful. Their responses show the limits of good intentions: the club could offer training, companionship, and a route toward recognition, but it could not decide for Hara what he owed the victims or make his inherited public association with his father disappear.

The episode also precedes a longer interruption in Hara’s life. A later account describes him spending nearly a decade as a day laborer, moving between jobs as rumors of his parentage followed him, before repeated shoplifting convictions brought him back into public attention. The championship withdrawal and balcony fall do not alone explain that later trajectory, but they establish an early break between sporting promise and ordinary stability. Hara’s achievement in the East Japan tournament had briefly made him the center of attention; the crisis that followed converted that attention from celebration into pressure, and his disappearance left others with only an incomplete account of what he had endured.