Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.
Your first question upon seeing Pom Harajuku trot around the ring in splashy, jester-like gear and pigtails as she grins and blunders might be: What the heck is a Pom Harajuku?
That’s not a simple answer. She is a glorious surge of joy. A buzzing mess of colors. A clown among queens.
Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling, where Pom plies her trade, is a motley collection of characters, a place where a cold killer like Miyu Yamashita has to contend with a cartoonish superhero armed with cold spray like Hyper Misao. A high-spirited strongwoman in pink like Miu Watanabe might clash with Shoko Nakajima, a woman who contends to be a monster in the vein of Godzilla and King Kong despite her 4’10” stature.
This is one of the few places a wrestler like Harajuku could fit in.
You take Pom’s goofy schtick and minimal in-ring ability to STARDOM and she’d flounder. She simply doesn’t have the wrestling chops to keep up with that crew. Take her to a WWE tryout, and she’d surely be turned away. Triple H would absolutely be baffled at Pom’s routine pre-match squawking/vocal warm-ups.
You can see a good microcosm of the Pom experience by watching her, Rika Tatsumi and Miu Watanabe take on Miyu Yamashita, Mizuki and Nao Kakuta at TJPW’s “Mizuki’s Hometown Is Kobe” show on January 13.
In the ring opposite Yamashita, TJPW’s end boss and resident ass kicker, Pom tries to go kick for kick. Pom’s strikes are feeble, sweeping kicks aimed at the shin; Yamashita’s attacks are rapid-fire blows, pounding the thigh. Pom’s kicks miss. Miyu’s do not.
In response, Pom, desperate to escape, shrieks, making the sound you might make if a roach crawled up your leg.
Pom flops to the mat in pain. Her face is stretched in exaggerated agony. She’s doing slapstick while Miyu is executing an action scene.
Of course, Harajuku can’t get Mizuki or Yamashita in her head-scissors takedown. She gets used as a weapon when Watanabe bodyslams her slim frame onto Nakuta’s prone body. Pom is pushed around, batted about, a human version of those inflatable clowns made for kids to punch.
This is Pom’s fate, her role on this stage. Pop on just about any match and you’ll see similar misadventures filled with physical comedy aplenty.
Back in 2021, she took on Hikari Noa at a show held in Shin-Kiba 1st RING.
Knowing she could not match Noa with power or speed or technical ability, Pom chose the menace route. She disguised herself as a photographer and hid at ringside before ambushing Hikari.
Even with that unfair advantage, Pom couldn’t do much of anything against her foe. She trapped Hikari under her legs and “pounded” her fists on her chest. Except the blows were as weak as gas station coffee. They should be classified as more of a dance than an offensive move.
It’s a ridiculous looking attack. Much like everything Pom does.
This is where some fans might dismiss her right away. She’s not powerful or particularly skillful. She will do zero impressive moves in her bouts. Instead, she will howl and retreat and suffer everyone else’s offense.
She’s supposed to be the bottom feeder of the TJPW food chain. She’s the roach you crunch beneath your shoe.
Pom’s shtick comes from the Sakura Hirota school of comedy wrestling. Her failures are part of the fun. She’s not a danger to anyone; she’s a goofy pest. And if she makes you chuckle before someone swats her away, she’s done her job.
TJPW clearly books her as a non-threat.
She has won zero championships. No International Championship. No tag title. Nada.
Per CageMatch.net, Pom went 1-8 in singles matches in 2023. She’s never won more than five one-on-one matches in a year. As of this writing, her career singles record is 13-49. That’s a paltry .206 winning percentage.
Just about everybody in TJPW has a dominant record against Pom:
- Yuki Kamifuku: 5-0
- Hyper Misao: 4-0
- Rika Tatsumi: 4-1-1
- Hikari Noa: 3-0
- Miyu Yamashita: 2-0
- Shoko Nakajima: 2-0
Pom’s an easy win. She’s a means for other wrestlers to gain momentum. You need to have someone play that role in the hierarchy, to make others look better, to give the predators someone to feast on.
Haruna Neko sits in that spot, too, but she lacks the charm and panache that Pom brings.
Pom’s act is loud and abrasive. She’s over-the-top silly. You may not like that flavor she cooks up, but you damn sure won’t forget her.
Her peak thus far has been her work against or alongside Max the Impaler.
Max is a terrifying human being with smeared war paint on an ever-snarling face and a body built like an SUV. They tore their way into the happy-go-lucky world of TJPW in 2022.
And who better to contrast the overwhelming beast that is Max? Pom herself.
TJPW wisely had Max the Impaler fixate on Pom, hunting her down, chasing her through offices, pursue her with a salivating maw.
The two met in the ring in August 2022 at a Princess Cup event. The result was an entertaining display of torture. Max walloped the smaller Pom in a mismatch for the ages. Harajuki was wide-eyed and trembling, a fearful piece of bait.
After the battle, Max carried her backstage like a butcher taking a rack of lamb to the freezer.
The juxtaposition of clown and carnivore was pure comedy, a bit the company mined further by joining these two as a tag team. The Pom-Max alliance was one of the most entertaining elements in TJPW for the past two years. This was a seven-headed hydra teaming with a shih tzu, the image of them side by side is worth a chuckle in of itself.
Pom’s fear paired perfectly with Max’s fearsomeness. Max steamrolled; Pom staggered.
The duo challenged for the Princess Tag Team Championships last March but couldn’t overcome Pom’s shortcomings. Yuka Sakazaki clocked Pom in the jaw to finish her off and end the hopes of this unlikely pairing.
In the moments after the referee counted to three, Pom lied on her back as tears wet her face.
That genuine emotional image was short-lived. Pom was soon howling cartoonishly backstage, crying like a baby doll. She can’t go long without a healthy helping of the ludicrous.
Pom is a vibrant and indelible part of TJPW. And she will remain so without a win streak or a championship or some emphatic defeat of a rival.
It’s her character that connects, not her accomplishments.
If you find her irritating or underwhelming, that’s understandable. The same kind of comedy doesn’t click with everyone. For fans who can find humor in her ineptitude, though, Pom is a lovable lover to latch onto.
She’s a plucky rascal in plaid who is boisterously and unabashedly herself. She’s unique. She’s a change of pace.
She’s Charlie Brown, forever running toward that football that she will never kick.
Wrestle Inn 