TOKYO - Ritsuko Nakayama, a pioneering female professional bowler who helped ignite the bowling boom of the late 1960s and 1970s in Japan, died Saturday, according to the national sport organization. She was 84.
Nakayama was one of 13 first-generation female professional bowlers in 1969, after playing volleyball at a high school in Kagoshima Prefecture. She had been receiving treatment for an illness, the Japan Professional Bowling Association said.
A symbol of Japan's high economic growth from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, she became the nation's first female professional bowler to score a perfect 300 game during a televised monthly tournament final in 1970. She won 33 professional titles.
The bowler, nicknamed "Sawayaka Ritsuko-san" (Refreshing Ritsuko), became the association's first female president in 2004 and honorary president in 2012, while also promoting the sport as head of the Japan Ladies Bowling Club.
During the period of rapid growth, bowling surged as a national pastime, with the number of alleys rising from 970 in 1969 to 3,697 in 1972 in Japan. People waited hours to enter, and television networks aired 10 bowling programs. The boom faded with the 1973 oil shock.
