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The story
Rui Takahashi (26), a men’s volleyball player for Suntory in Japan’s SV League, has come out as gay via his own radio show and Instagram. He revealed struggles he’d carried since his teens, recalling that at the time he’d thought, “Maybe it’ll go away once I turn 20.” Takahashi is also known as the older brother of Japan national team player Ran Takahashi. Reactions on a 5ch thread were sharply divided: some corrected the discussion by citing the WHO’s position that homosexuality is “not an illness,” others compared his announcement to past celebrity coming-outs, and still others speculated that his brother’s fame played a role in his decision to go public.
September 29, 2026, 3:12 PM
Rui Takahashi (26), older brother of Japan men’s national volleyball team player Ran Takahashi and a member of Suntory in the men’s SV League, came out as gay via his own Instagram on the 29th. He first revealed he was gay late on the night of the 28th during the MBS radio program “Rui Takahashi’s Rui’s ROOM” (Mondays, 1am), speaking in his own words about the struggles and feelings that led him to the announcement.
“Rui Takahashi’s Rui’s ROOM” is the first radio program on which Takahashi has served as main host. He opened the episode with an energetic self-introduction — “Hey everyone, I’m Rui Takahashi from Suntory Sunbirds Osaka!” — and the first half was upbeat, covering things like his commentary work at the Asian Championships and memories of elementary school talent shows.
Source: hochi.news / Original article here
What people said
Seeing that, you'd almost think it'd cure him lol
'I wazza gay' (mimicking broken English pronunciation of "I was gay")
Sounds like something a Showa-era old man would say.
Wait, was he actually hiding it?
Like, I thought it was just his on-screen persona, but it turned out to be real?
Come on, she surely knew and married him anyway.
Why would the viewers know but not his own wife, lol
Looks like he's using his brother's fame.
I'd say it's exactly because his brother is famous that he felt he had no choice but to say it himself.
Watching his brother get dragged through tabloid stories that have nothing to do with volleyball and get endlessly mocked by you guys, he probably got scared his own sexuality would eventually leak out and get sensationalized too.
What condition, exactly?
Please tell me the actual name of the disease.
The WHO officially states it's not something to be 'treated.'
Yeah, there's just no room to say that these days (*´･ω･)(･ω･`*)
No idea about the man himself though. (a pun on his surname, "Gay")
Sounds like something people would say about Marvin Gaye too. (same pun, different spelling)
Do you seriously think it's some kind of illness?
Showa-era old folks never updated their knowledge, so that's the kind of thinking they end up with.
I was literally about to write the exact same thing lol
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Cases of active athletes in Japanese sports coming out as gay remain rare. The World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its classification of mental disorders in the 1990 revision of the ICD-10, so the very framing of being ‘cured’ or ‘not cured’ isn’t medically supported to begin with. In the thread, several posts pushed back on comments calling it an ‘illness’ by citing this fact, which highlighted a generational gap in awareness. Takahashi is also the older brother of national team player Ran Takahashi, and some posters speculated that his brother’s fame was a motivating factor behind the announcement — though it’s worth noting this is purely thread speculation, not something Takahashi himself has stated. As with the case of Ryuchell, which was brought up in the discussion, there have been other instances where a celebrity’s private coming-out to family came well before any public announcement, and that context shaped part of this discussion as well.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “[Volleyball] ‘I saw it as something negative’ — Gay-announcing Rui Takahashi on struggles ‘since my teens’: ‘I thought it would clear up once I turned 20…’ [Ailuropoda melanoleuca★].”
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