Photograph by Kevin A.Roberts
When you want to see a grown man spin a wooden top like nobody’s business, you come to Hiroshi Tada. The semiretired mechanical-engineering instructor entertains kids of all ages with his unique “top show” at events like this month’s Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. During his performances, he masterfully spins tops—known as koma-mawashi in Japan—combining elements of yo-yo, juggling, and magic. And if you’re nice to him, the grinning 73-year-old might just put a spinning top on your head.
• It started in the ’40s, when I was 6 or 7. I played a lot with tops when I was a kid, for years, and I got better than the other kids. But then, like most kids, I stopped. In 1995, after a good 40 years of not spinning tops,
I picked them up again.
• I had a friend at Washington University, an expert in analytical dynamics. I met him at his office, and he had some tops. “I can spin tops,” I told him. He was surprised at my skills. Then I started practicing again. Then I started to do it in public.
• In my show, I spin a top on the tip of the hand, and kids can hold it, too. Then I spin a top on a rope. Then I fling the top high into the air with the rope, and catch it on the rope. I go behind my back with it, too. We are in St. Louis, so I also spin a baseball and a bat like a top.
• I can make small tops easily using acorns. The tops I use in my show I made myself at a machine shop, and I basically only use those three. I do have a few more, but I’m not a collector.
• Kids like moving parts. When I put a spinning top on their finger, they enjoy it. They want to do it, but it takes practice.
• These days, kids are too interested in high-tech things and not primitive toys. I like to kindle the interest of children in these kinds of toys.
• I’m now old enough that spinning tops is all the exercise I need. [Laughs.]
