Shogo Shimura: Breaking Free from the Curse of Assumptions

2021/06/11

At times, he is a magician who has won a world championship in Las Vegas; at others, a psychiatrist who saves those in distress; and at others still, the mental coach for the Japan national rhythmic gymnastics team at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

"The reason people suffer and the reason they are deceived by magic are the same. It is 'assumptions.'" Based on this belief, he uses magic to help patients and struggling athletes alike free themselves from their "assumptions."

At the request of Hiroko Yamazaki, Director of the Japan Gymnastics Association, he has been involved in coaching the national team since 2017. In the mornings, he performs magic to make them realize "how much humans are influenced by assumptions," and in the afternoons, he points out the athletes' mistaken assumptions, preaching that "what you should focus on is not uncontrollable results or success, but only your own actions." As a result, athletes who had feared making mistakes clearly changed, and the team won the silver medal in the group all-around at the 2019 World Championships for the first time in 44 years.

He himself was once trapped by "assumptions."

Born into a family of doctors, he assumed that he had "no choice but to become a doctor."

Meanwhile, he became immersed in magic as a hobby.

Even at Juku High School, he belonged to the magic club, ignoring his parents' words to "study" and spending eight hours a day fiddling with playing cards. After graduation, he entered the School of Medicine, but he spent so much time on magic that he had to repeat a year. Although he thought his "life was over," he decided to prove himself through magic and went to study abroad at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). He continued his training by frequenting the "hall of magic" in Hollywood.

After returning to Japan, he competed in the 2012 Junior Magic World Championship in Las Vegas against his parents' wishes. Although he won, he could not purely rejoice when he thought about what would come next. This was because he did not have the courage to quit the School of Medicine and become a magician. At that time, he read a psychiatry book in the library that said "assumptions narrow one's perspective," and he thought, "This is the same as magic."

Magicians are professionals at controlling the audience's assumptions. If so, perhaps showing magic could help break people's assumptions. Once he thought that, the path opened up all at once.

Even the "revealing of tricks," which is a taboo in magic, should be utilized in treatment if it helps someone think positively about life. There are no tricks or gimmicks to that passion.