Mitsuhiro Endo established the Japan Armwrestling Federation (JAWA) 30 years ago. The sport has developed a lot since then and today Japan is one of the leading armwrestling countries in the world, especially in the lower weight categories.
The federation of Japan was divided in 2003 and since then there are two federations - JAWA, lead by Mitsuhiro Endo and AJAF, lead by Yuji Siroishi.
JAWA, mostly with members from the western Japan is the largest federation of them two and belongs to the World Armwrestling Federation. AJAF has most of it's members in the eastern part of Japan and belongs to the World Armsport Federation. We asked Yoshinori Mitsuoka a few questions about the sport in Japan. 

Do you have any upcoming stars in Japan that you believe will reach far in the sport?
-60 kg Tujimoto (right), Mitsumoto (left)
-65 kg Takeuchi (left)
-70 kg Maeyama (right), Masaya Yamamoto (right)
-75 kg Yoshimitu Tanaka (right and left) Seiji Fujima (right)
-85 kg Hujita Koji (right and left), Wataru Nishikawa (right)
-100 kg Gedo (right)
+110 kg Kanai Brothers, Nakano (right and left)

How has the sport developed in Japan lately?
The number of armwrestlers has doubled the last years and the level has become very high. There were not many armwrestlers who could fight in the world ten years ago in Japan and now we have about 1500 armwrestlers belonging to the JAWA and about 1000 armwrestlers belonging to the AJAF. If we also count all of the armwrestlers who are not very active anymore we have about 8000 armwrestlers totally in Japan.
The JAWA Nationals is performed in Tokyo and only the strongest armwrestlers whom the JAWA has accepted can participate in there, so the number of participants are limited to about 200 armwrestlers.