Our Founder's Principles
Tatsuki's story that connects the Victories
Everything started from the passion of our founder
V stands for Victories - These are tirumphs, successes, achievements, and joys.
The Founder of Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club, Kuniomi Omori, had dreams and messages he wanted to convey through swimming.
In order to fulfill these dreams, he established Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club. There, he spent his life achieving many of his visions.
This was our founder's "Victory."
Inheriting Kuniomi's victories, Tatsuki Group will continue to expand its activities to achieve new goals.
VICTORY STORY 01
Our Founder's Victory
Kuniomi was one of the leading figures in implementing goggles into swimming education,developing swimming curriculum for the disabled people,and spreading clothed-swimming drills.
After aiming for the Olympics, he became a swimming instructor.
Kuniomi Omori entered Chukyo High School and Chukyo University as a swimmer with a scholarship, and spent his youth immersed in training with the aim of competing in the Olympics. He was eventually selected as an Olympic candidate, but regrettably did not make it due to injuries.
Upon graduating from university, he had originally hoped to become a school teacher - he combied his passion for education and swimming, and established Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club in 1973.
Pioneer of swimming instruction partnerships with kindergartens and nursery schools
Being a swimming instructor was a calling for Kuniomi.
As an instructor, he was involved in teaching a wide range of swimmers from beginners to professionals on a daily basis, while striving to expand the activities to realize the dream of promoting swimming for all.
With the hope of conveying the pleasure of swimming and the joy of achieving goals, Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club was one of the first in Japan to cooperate with kindergartens and nursery schools.
Nowadays, the cooperation between swimming schools and nurseries/kindergartens are a very common practice, but this was a groundbreaking endeavour at the time.
And now, we carry on his practice by continuing to have partnerships with more than 15 institutions.
When teaching swimming to children, Kuniomi found that many of his pupils were having difficulties opening their eyes in the water.
After pondering on how he could teach without them fearing the water, he decided to have the children wear goggles to practice.
This, too, is now a normal practice at swimming pools, but at the time it was out of the norm - he took part in normalizing goggles for children's swimming education.
Swimming instruction that transcends regionional and handicap barriers.
At the time of his career, swimming facilities were not readily available in mountainous areas of Japan.
Kuniomi felt that it was unfair that children in these mountainous areas could not learn to swim, so he began traveling three hours each way to Toei Town, Kitashitara County, to teach swimming.
We still have a partnership with Toei Elementary School and oversee their swimming curriculum.
Kuniomi's commitments spread through the word of mouth, and one day he was requested by parents of a blind boy to teach him swimming. This was a encounter made by fate.
Coincidentally, around the same time that Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club was founded, access to special needs education was mandated by the government, creating equal opportunity for students with disabilities.
Through trial and error, Kuniomi instructed the boy who was completely blind.
This encounter with the boy inspired Kuniomi to create the disability course, which we still offer to this day. Our qualified coaches teach children with both physical and intellectual disabilities.
Aiming zero deaths through water-related accidents.
As a swimming instructor, Kuniomi was deeply hurt by water-related accidents that happen every year. One of the answers he came up with as he thought about what he could do as a person involved in "water" was "clothed swimming". When people fall in the state of panic due to a sudden water-related accident, it is not easy to stay afloat in the water with clothes and shoes on without knowing the proper techniques. With the hope of saving one life at the time, Kuniomi began to offer clothed swimming practices regularly at the Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club. As an unprecendented effort, he and his team worked together to come up with a program for each swimming levels, with a focal point of "How can we teach children to enter the water with their clothes on without being scared?"
Many Victories achieved by our founder.
The episodes that led to the establishment of Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club are all exciting, unique, and ahead of their time.
At times, because these ideas were so avant-garde that we could not have the understandings of those around us.
Yet, all of Kuniomi's efforts are now the norm.
In his late years, Kuniomi became ill with intractable illness - yet, he continued to instruct the disability courses to swimming coaches as he himself carried a oxygen tank to travel all across Japan.
The seeds he planted through passion have finally sprouted and blossomed - the number of disabled swimmers are increasing annually.
The Victory achieved by the founder, Kuniomi, has taken root in the Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club as the "Tatsuki-ism" and has been passed on to the next generation.
It was the dream and hope of the founder to further grow the three pillars of Tatsuki today: swimming education, disability swimming course, and water-safety class.
We would like to connect that legacy to achieve new Victories.
VICTORY STORY 02
Challenge to new Victories
The founder, Kuniomi Omori, left behind many victories, and the current president, Kumi Omori, the daughter of the founder, has inherited his spirit and started the next stage of the Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club, aiming for further victories. Now, the stage is expanding to the world - A new Victory Story of Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club now take on challenges from a global perspective.
With the spirit inherited from our founder
Challenge toward the world from a global perspective
Through trial and error, we have finally started to formalize our efforts.
I returned from Texas to take care of my founder in his last years.
I remember my father's back, his pruned hands, which I've been familiar since I was a child. I know how my father founded and had protected the Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club with his passion and enthusiasm.
I inherited my father's company with the thought of "I can't let his efforts go to waste. I will not lose it."
It is thanks to the employees who have taken over my father's will and have been protecting the company in their own workplace for being who I am today.
And it is my mission to keep watering the tree that is Tatsuki that my father has left me.
"How can we be a one-of-a-kind swimming school?" "How shall we brand our Tatsuki?" With these questions in mind, I started to reform Tatsuki through my experience in United States as well as a female entrepreneur perspective.
Over the years, I have successfully worked on our environmental endeavours such as reducing paper usage, simplifying operations, training employees, and improving the overall quality of the company as a whole, and now we have made significant changes.
Opening our US branch
Ever since the headquarters of Toyota Motors North America moved from California to Texas, I envisioned of opening a branch of Tatsuki there. The reason is that Toyota has a close relationship with Okazaki City, and I was confident that our high-level swimming instruction would be well received. And in 2021, we opened the Tatsuki Swimming School Texas. We were able to create the opportunity for cultural exchange between coaches and students of our American branch and the Japanese headquarters. In the modern era where gloablization is the new norm, we are happy to have been able to create a bridge between the two nations through swimming.
Establishment of General Incorporated Association Power Stroke
With the aim of reducing water-related accidents and contributing to society, we established the "General Incorporated Association Power Stroke" to develop the "training for life-saving and clothed swimming", which is one of the three pillars of the Okazaki Tatsuki Swimming Club.
We want students to know that swimming is not only about winning competitions, but experience the swimming that can "save lives" and increase their sense of self-esteem.
When the career as a swimming instructor comes to a halt, we wanted to offer our veteran instructors opportunities for their second careers.
In reality, the goal is to learn the techniques of clothed swimming to teach people of its techniques.
However, our ideal is that the techniques and passions that comes from it could be distributed among Tatsuki, Power Stroke, and society.
We will continue to create this cycle, increase our partners, and share the positivity of Power Stroke.
We hope to be a company that can change along the times, and contribute to our employees and the world.
The Tatsuki Group will continue to carefully protect the Victory passed down from our founder, while changing with the times to become a company that can contribute to employee and society.
For more information on the business of Tatsuki Group, please visit this page.
VICTORY STORY 03
Connecting the V's
Connecting the individual 'V's to make a 'W'
Children have their own dreams and goals.
What can we do to assist the children to achieve them?
Things one can learn from swimming: Importance of hard work, the satisfaction of overcoming difficulties, the value of our lives, and the joys of achieving goals.
All of these experiences will surely contribute to a bright future for children.
WIN WITH WATER
Tatsuki Group will continue to support children to achieve their individual Victory through swimming.