You’re mainly posting on Instagram about your eating habits these days, especially veganism, right?

I’ve been vegan since May 2020. The reason is because I saw "The Game Changers," a documentary film about athletes turning a meat-based diet into a vegetable-based one and the effects on their performance.

Between the period when the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were postponed and the lockdown, I thought hard about how to grow as a competitor. It’s difficult to improve your physical condition, so I realized that learning new things and improving myself as a human being was the way I could grow. When I was studying climate change and I first learned the word "species discrimination," I was shocked.

When you say "species discrimination," do you mean discrimination that privileges humans and neglects other living things?

Exactly. We think of dogs and cats as cute, but we still put dead animals (meat) on our dining tables – just a different kind.

The reason why I was so shocked and upset was that it made me see that I was also a perpetrator of discrimination, while at the same time, I was trying to fight it through swimming and speaking out. Even more so, I was devastated because I didn’t realize my role in this. To get rid of the contradiction, I went vegan in food, clothes and cosmetics. I want to actively share my learnings and insights with others because my experience showed me that there are times when we are limited by what we know or don’t.

I think your words and actions are so convincing because you have such an objective view of yourself and things.

I was never very good at looking at myself objectively, but after the Rio Paralympics, I got help from a psychology coach. For the first time, I trained myself to observe the emotions that I felt. That made my moods less volatile and helped me train in a more detached way. At the same time, I started yoga and that helped me objectively observe my body, breathing, and emotions on the mat. Soon, I was able to do it in my everyday life, even after I rolled up the mat.

What kind of initiatives do you want to take in the future?

My constant goal is to "ensure that no one finds it difficult to live in our society.” Until now, I’ve been working to achieve this through swimming. One of the big reasons that I retired was because the Paralympics started to receive the attention they deserved, and I did everything I could as a swimmer.

I think the next step is to jump into an area where people with disabilities haven’t existed before and do all I can to remove existing barriers. I’d like to do this through modeling. Since the Paralympics is for para-athletes, in a sense, we are just filling in the slots made for people with disabilities. From sports, I learned that powerful messages can be transmitted without words, so I want to try expressing myself by modeling for art or photos.

Finally, are you currently on or off?

I’m always on. Since I retired, people keep asking me the same thing, but although I’ve let go of swimming, my purpose remains the same. There’s no way my passion for it will die down. I’m only getting started. 

About Mei Ichinose

Born in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan with a congenital deficiency of the lower right arm, Mei started swimming at one and a half years old. In 2010 she became the youngest athlete in history to take part in the Asian Championship at 13 years old, winning the silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle (physical impairment classification S9). Mei competed in eight events at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics and currently holds the Japanese record for seven events. She retired from active competition in October 2021, and now continues to work to eliminate discrimination for persons with disabilities.