When you first want to take up pickleball, the reliable sources of information in Japan have so far centered on YouTube, blogs, and word of mouth at trial sessions. Now a new option is joining that mix: a book. Around July 13, 2026, Kojinsha will release the introductory title \"Hajimete Miyou! Pickleball\" (Let's Try Pickleball). It's an A5-size, 152-page volume priced at 1,800 yen (before tax). Covering everything from illustrated rules to how to hit a dink and eight practice drills in a single book, it finally gives beginners who have taught themselves by following videos a \"textbook\" they can keep at hand.<\/p>\n
The publisher is Kojinsha, a Kyoto-based house. The author is Futa Ueno, born in 1977 in Wakayama Prefecture. After serving as a founding member of a sports management company, he worked as a tennis coach, and he now focuses on spreading and coaching pickleball. The ISBN is 978-4-7709-0081-4, the publication date is July 10, and it is expected to reach bookstores and online retailers around July 13.<\/p>\n
The book is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 covers the sport's origins, Chapter 2 the rules, Chapter 3 how to get started, Chapter 4 \"10 points for beginners to improve,\" Chapter 5 practice methods, and Chapter 6 moves on to the health side. From the serve, return, groundstrokes, and volley to the dink that is unique to pickleball, it explains the \"knack\" and technique for each shot with illustrations. The dink, in which players float the ball just over the net to break down their opponent, is a technique that tends to trip up experienced tennis players who tense up and pop it too high, and it's exactly the kind of area where the strength of print, letting you check the trajectory in a still image, shines.<\/p>\n
Pickleball has really only started to gain attention in Japan over the past year or two. Because a book takes anywhere from six months to a year from planning to publication, publishing hadn't kept pace with the sport's rapid growth. There had been almost no serious print introductory book you could read in Japanese, so beginners had no choice but to piece together their learning from English rulebooks and individual videos. This title fills that gap as one of the first serious introductory books of its kind in Japan.<\/p>\n
Video has the strength of being able to show \"movement,\" but it isn't well suited to covering the necessary items systematically and in order. Which shot to learn first, and which drills to lock it in with \u2014 laying out that learning path as a single line is the role of a book. Someone who has tried a rally once at a trial session reviews the rules and etiquette at home the next day. A print manual fits neatly into that \"before and after the video\" use.<\/p>\n
Organizing the elements the book covers brings the full picture of the learning into view.<\/p>\n