Last Updated on April 24, 2024 by Alex Horscroft
As one of the top-ranked Japanese female players, Mima Ito is one of the few individuals who is challenging China’s reign of dominance. With her direct style that features short pips on her backhand and an inverted rubber on her backhand, she’s no ordinary player.
Ito has given many players trouble over the years and this has led to her being classed as the greatest threat to China. While I believe she’s far off from overcoming the top few Chinese players career-wise, she rose to become one of the highest-ranked players in the world from a very early age. She also remains quite young and may not yet have reached her peak.
Mima Ito Key Info
- Name: Mima Ito
- Nationality: Japanese
- Date of Birth: 21st October 2000
- Grip: Shakehand
- Style: Counter driver
- Highest ranking: 2 (2020-2021)
- Height: 5ft
- Weight: 45kg (99lb)
Mima Ito’s Equipment
Mima Ito’s Blade
Mima Ito’s blade of choice is the Mima Ito Carbon. While you might think that this blade was specifically designed for her playstyle, in reality, it’s not. It is essentially a recolored Nittaku Acoustic Carbon — another highly popular blade that Ito has been playing with for many years.
Therefore, it shares the same composition as the Acoustic carbon sporting a 7-ply build of 5 layers of wood and 2 layers of FE carbon. It was put on sale to commemorate Ito’s 20th birthday, and given it is her signature blade, she selected the handle design and her signature features on the face.
Mima Ito’s Rubbers
Ito uses two rubbers for her playstyle: Nittaku Fastarc G-1 on her forehand and Nittaku Moristo Sp on her backhand.
I too use Fastarc G-1 and it’s an incredible rubber. It is certainly one of the fastest and spinniest available, yet it’s not overly expensive — this is much of the reason I use it. Given Ito smashes so much on her forehand, I’m a tad surprised she doesn’t go for something a little harder, but alas, it seems to work for her.
As for her backhand, she uses Moristo SP, a short pimple rubber. While she is very fast off the bounce with her backhand, Moristo SP, while quick, is not as fast as some of the other top rubbers. It’s also a little on the expensive side for this type of rubber. However, it has proven very popular with short pips players.
Mima Ito’s Playstyle
Direct Attack
Mima Ito’s playstyle differs from the norm, which I for one, find refreshing. She sports short pimples on her backhand and an inverted rubber on her forehand.
She uses short pimples to great effect, taking the ball early off the bounce to catch her opponents off-guard. The advantage of using short pimples over inverted allows her to punch balls that she otherwise wouldn’t be able to, as short pimples are less susceptible to incoming spin.
As for her forehand, she primarily plays a very direct game, executing cracking smashes whenever she can. That being said, she is a skilled looper in her own right, and she will loop the ball as needed.
Drop Shots
As is typical with short pimples, Ito tries to stay fairly close to the table to strike the ball at its highest point. She will even take it early to put her opponents under pressure.
As she is such a skilled attacker, she often forces her opponents away from the table with her speed and use of angles. This opens up her skilled drop-shot game which is a massive rhythm upsetter. These drop shots frequently bounce twice on the table making them almost impossible to return.
Short Strokes
The advantage of using direct strokes is that Mima Ito doesn’t necessarily need a massive stroke like she would if she were constantly looping. Therefore, for particularly fast strokes Ito uses very short driving motions, often starting absurdly close to the ball. It’s a wonder she can generate so much pace from such little wind-up.
Of course, when she has the time to use longer strokes, she does so as this gives her more power to hit the ball past her opponents.
Check out some of her best points below!
Best of Mima Ito — World Table Tennis
Shovel serves
Sticking with the unorthodox style of play, Ito also uses an unorthodox serve: the shovel serve. Most professionals use the pendulum, but not Ito. She almost exclusively uses the shovel, only throwing out a chop serve or two on occasion.
Most of Ito’s shovel serves are long, but she mixes up her backspin and topspin rather well, so she can almost certainly return the second ball even if her opponent attacks it.
Mima Ito’s Career
Early Career — Records From an Early Age
As is often the case with the top players in the world, Mima Ito was breaking records from a very early age. She was competing with the best in her country before her teen years. By the age of 10, she won a match at the Japanese Table Tennis Championships, making her the youngest ever. Later that year she became the youngest player to win a tournament at the Junior ITTF Circuit.
A year after in the Spanish Open, Ito demonstrated that she had outgrown her meager 192 world ranking, beating Matilda Ekholm of Sweden who was ranked 50 in a tight five-setter. Unfortunately, rank 29 player Yang Ha Eun forced her to come crashing back down to earth after that high. This was of little surprise, she was only 11 after all.
Later, at the age of 14, Ito was back to claim another record. This time by becoming the youngest player to claim a women’s singles title from the ITTF Challenge Series tournament or ITTF World Tour. In this same year, Mima Ito broke into the top 10.
Soon thereafter, Ito made her Olympics debut, playing a crucial role in her team claiming the bronze medal. She defeated 4th-ranked player Feng Tinawei — a sign of things to come. Unsurprisingly, this earned her yet another record. This time for the youngest player to claim an award in the Women’s Team event.
Current Career — Establishing a Legacy
Having demonstrated incredible ability on the world stage, it was time for Ito to show her prowess in her home country of Japan. She did so at the All-Japan Championships in January 2018 where she completed a triple crown by claiming the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Thus making her the third player ever to do so, and the youngest at 17.
By the end of the year, she cemented her credibility, overcoming every Chinese player ranked above her. This included Ding Ning, Liu Shiwen, and Zhu Yuling. It’s no wonder many fans have claimed that she is the greatest threat to the Chinese.
Ito would then go on a monumental run at the World Championships, claiming silverware in every tournament from 2018 to 2022, only missing out in 2020 where she lost in the semifinals of the singles event to Wang Manyu.
Yet 2020 was very successful for Ito without this title, as this marked Ito’s first major gold at a seniors event. She did so with Jun Mizutani in the mixed doubles which was the first year it featured.
While it is true Ito has slightly regressed in the world rankings, peaking at 2 in 2020-2021, she still sits at a respectable 10th position in 2023. With such a strong track record of silvers in the World Championships, I expect it will not be long before she claims her first gold medal in the event.
Mima Ito’s Toughest Opponents
Mimi Ito vs. Wang Manyu
Mima has faced Wang Manyu a total of 15 times 1 on 1, and only managed to win on 2 occasions, giving her a poor 15% win rate.
As the win rate suggests, Manyu often makes short work of Ito, winning in straight sets or losing only a game here and there. They have only gone to a final set on two occasions and Manyu won both times, once on the World Tour in 2018 and once at the WTT Star Contender European Series in 2022.
Mima Ito vs. Ding Ning
There’s no denying Ito has struggled against Ding Ning in the past, winning on just 4 of 11 occasions. Yet just as Ito was starting to make things more competitive, Ding Ning retired.
In their last six meetings, the record stands at 3-3. In fact, Ito made incredibly short work of Ding Ning in their final match. She annihilated her 4-0 at the Qatar Open in March 2020. To add insult to injury, Ito whitewashed her 11-0, in the 3rd game. This marked the first time in history a non-Chinese player had beaten a Chinese player 11-0. It’s such a shame we never got to see them face off again!
Mima Ito vs. Chen Meng
Of all the players Mima Ito has faced, she has the worst record against Chen Meng. She has faced her on 6 occasions and lost all of them.
However, we can hardly blame her. Meng is one of the most successful female players of the current era. She holds 8 gold medals and has been ranked either 1st or 2nd in the world almost for the entirety of late 2017 to 2023.
The closest Ito ever came to beating her was at the Swedish Open in 2019. She lost 4 games to 3.
Mima Ito vs. He Zhuojia
Mima Ito’s record against He Zhuojia is almost just as bad as against Chen Meng. She has lost on all 5 occasions of their official meetings. In fact, they also met on three occasions before which are not visible on their records — Ito lost all 3 of these too.
Yet with this matchup, I think it’s important to remember that a lot of these meetings occurred when Ito was very young and Zhuojia was 2 years older. Their most recent match occurred some time ago in 2018, and Ito managed to claim 2 of the 4 possible games.
If they were to play today, I think the match would go differently.
| Opponents | Wins | Losses | Win Rate |
| Wang Manyu | 2 | 13 | 15% |
| Chen Meng | 0 | 6 | 0% |
| Chen Xingtong | 1 | 5 | 20% |
| Wang Yidi | 2 | 5 | 29% |
| Doo Hoi Kem | 6 | 4 | 60% |
| He Zhuojia | 0 | 5 | 20% |
| Ding Ning | 4 | 11 | 27% |
| Zhu Yuling | 2 | 3 | 40% |
| Sun Yingsha | 2 | 7 | 22% |
| Yang Haeun | 4 | 4 | 50% |
Mima Ito’s Medals
🏆 Olympic Games — 1x gold, 1x silver, 2x bronze (Singles, Team, Mixed Doubles)
🏆 World Championships — 6x silver, 1x bronze (Doubles, Team)
🏆 World Cup — 2x silver, 1x bronze (Singles, Team)
🏆 World Junior Championships — 1x gold, 4x silver (Doubles, Team)
Closing Thoughts
It’s wonderful to see Mima Ito holding her own among the world’s best. With so many players displaying near-identical styles, it’s refreshing to watch Mima Ito. Her offensive close-to-the-table play is pretty formidable, and it pairs rather beautifully with her drop shots when she can force her opponents into lobbing.
As it stands, she’s achieved a lot in the table tennis world, but many titles still allude her. Namely a gold at the World Championships. With 6 silvers under her belt, she must be eyeing up that elusive gold.
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I've been playing table tennis since the age of 14 and have competed against some of the top players in England. While I love playing, I also really enjoy coaching too!
Blade: Butterfly Timo Boll ALC | Rubbers: Nittaku Fastarc G-1