There are some stories that don’t end. They just rupture and echo forever. Hana Kimura’s was one of them.
She didn’t just walk into the world of wrestling. She pirouetted into it, an atomic smile wrapped in pink flame. The daughter of Kyoko Kimura, a war-hardened joshi legend, Hana wasn’t merely born into wrestling—she was born from it. Blood, sweat, legacy. Her first match wasn’t booked in some bingo hall or under a warehouse roof—it happened in the womb, written in the DNA, foreordained like a Greek tragedy set to techno music and camera flashes.
Hana was the future, and everyone knew it. That’s the cruel thing.
She debuted in 2016, trained by Akira Nogami, molded in the dojo of Wrestle-1 where kayfabe still lived and scars meant something. Her debut match against Reika Saiki was like two firecrackers trying to outshine the sun. Even then, she was too much for one ring. She burned in every direction at once.
She moved through the early years like a storm with eyelashes. Stardom came calling, and Hana answered with a backhand slap and a wink. She was a stiletto in a division full of flats, raw and untamed and glowing like a glitch in the Matrix. Oedo Tai was her kingdom. Kagetsu was her cruel queen. Together they wore the Goddesses of Stardom titles like brass knuckles. And when she betrayed Oedo Tai—steel chair in hand, drama queen to the end—it felt like watching Cleopatra torch her own throne.
Her face was anime, but her work rate was all blood and agony. She could wrestle cute or kill. She was a paradox—silly one second, savage the next, like Sailor Moon with a shiv.
Tokyo Cyber Squad wasn’t just a stable. It was a rebellion. A pastel-drenched revolution of misfits, anarchists, and dreamers with Hana at the helm, smiling like she had already seen the future and it was beautiful. “Everyone’s different. Everyone’s special,” became their mantra. For fans, especially those who lived in the shadows, this wasn’t catchphrase. It was gospel.
And Hana was the high priestess.
She had that star thing. The kind you can’t teach, can’t replicate, can’t even define without sounding like a jackass. She could control a crowd with a glance. She didn’t need a promo. Her face was the promo. Her pink hair and radiant smile—the kind that could melt steel chairs—weren’t gimmicks. They were shields. Her offense had snap, her bumps had gravity, and her ring psychology? Ahead of its years like she’d skipped steps the rest of us didn’t know existed.
But the world she danced through wasn’t kind.
Terrace House was supposed to make her a household name. It did—but not for the reasons anyone hoped. When one ugly argument over a ruined costume aired, the audience—keyboard heroes and venomous ghosts—descended on her like hyenas. Social media became a minefield, and she kept walking through it barefoot.
Cyberbullying is a bland term for something that kills like cancer.
By the time Hana began tweeting dark poetry and posting photos of self-harm, the scream behind the smile had already grown deafening. On May 23, 2020, at just 22 years old, Hana Kimura took her own life by hydrogen sulfide inhalation. The light went out, and the industry staggered.
Her death wasn’t just tragic—it was infuriating. She was poised to be the face of Joshi wrestling for the next decade. She was supposed to main event domes, win gold on foreign soil, break hearts and records. She was the one who was going to make Stardom impossible to ignore, even to the blindfolded eyes of the West.
She had just started.
Wrestling, that strange old beast that eats its own young and then mourns them in the same breath, responded with tributes. AEW, WWE, NJPW—pink armbands, whispered prayers, solemn ten-bell salutes. But none of it filled the crater. None of it brought her back.
Her peers wore her memory like armor. Io Shirai spoke of her glow. Kairi Sane wrote her name on an umbrella like a love letter to the dead. Dakota Kai dyed her hair pink. Kenny Omega wore her shirt like a badge of shame—because all of us let her down.
But maybe the loudest tribute wasn’t a wrestler. It was her mother.
Kyoko Kimura became the avenger her daughter needed in life. She didn’t just mourn—she moved. She formed the “Remember Hana” foundation. She took Japan’s government to task. Her campaign helped pass legislation that criminalized online insults. For every hate-filled tweet that once darkened Hana’s timeline, there is now a law with teeth. A mother’s fury made it so.
And every May 23rd, Stardom pauses. The ring is silent. The girls wear pink. The ten bells toll. And if you listen closely, you can still hear her laugh echoing between the turnbuckles.
Hana Kimura wasn’t just a wrestler. She was the dream of a gentler tomorrow, sucker-punched by the present. She was everything we said we wanted in wrestling—a new kind of icon, beautiful and brutal, whimsical and wise—but when she needed protection, the industry stood by, sipping coffee while the house burned down.
Charles Bukowski once wrote, “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” Hana wasn’t crazy. She was just too alive in a world that doesn’t know what to do with aliveness.
In the end, she died not from weakness—but from all the strength it took to carry herself as long as she did.
Hana Kimura was fire wrapped in velvet, thunder wrapped in tulle.
She was special.
She was different.
And she mattered.
Forever.