Basketball: History maker Rui Hachimura fuels NBA boom in Japan

After becoming the first Japanese player to go pro in the United States via the NBA draft, Rui Hachimura is the face of a basketball boom in his home country.Hachimura's progress in the National Basketball Association is getting wall-to-wall coverage in Japanese media and his face can be seen advertising everything from shoes, to a bank, 5G internet and the nation's ubiquitous cup noodles.Overall interest in the NBA has risen since Hachimura's emergence, with Rakuten, the company which holds the league's Japanese broadcast rights, seeing a 30 percent year-on-year increase in subscriptions i…READ FULL ARTICLE