To: Mr. Sherman Chan
Managing Director, NIKE JAPAN
January 21, 2003

Dear Mr. Chan:
I received your answer to my letter from your attorney dated December 13、2002.

In a word, it was an unbelievable answer and showed no business morale. You are not at all aware of the fact that you are representing business circles. It showed no trace of your investigation, analysis, test of the structure of MAXAIR which was the cause of my injury. It is really regretful and makes me very angry.

In the letter it says ﾒas long as we see the picture of our product you sent us, we see no damaged areaﾉﾓ This answer shows that you never understood the contents of my claim, and makes me think you were either determined to reject my demand no matter what, or you are simply unwise.

If the shoes had been torn or broken, I would not have been injured. Any way, this answer is really missing the point, and the way this case was handled through the attorney is sloppy, and trust in NIKE was ruined at that time.

In order to make you understand this case, i.e. the rupture of the tendon better, let me explain in a little more detail.

First, hold your left ankle with your left hand firmly and raise your left toe. Your fingertips can feel the tendon raised forward. For bending your knee or for bending your ankle, you notice that the tendon of your ankle is moved forward a lot.

All human beings have the same structure of course, and this definite structure of the tendon is what I became aware of only after this accident.

I think as a shoe manufacturer you should know this basic fact. Above all, Nike flatters itself that it is now the number one sporting goods manufacturer and fitness company, and I know that the public would not allow such acts from Nike - for example, not sending out a recall notice, or compensating for an injury. I think nobody can be convinced that it is the attitude of a company which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars or a billion dollars for advertisement.

If it is possible, test people should wear MAXAIR, tie the shoelaces tightly and undergo some tests. Probably more than 50% of the test people will be greatly damaged, suffering, for example a rupture of the tendon.

Of my left foot, the tendon that pulls the first toe was completely cut and the tendon to pull the second toe was cut four fifths. Fortunately the tendon of the ankle was not cut, but because of big force applied there, it was greatly damaged and is still unsmooth.

To tell the truth, I was not wearing Nike shoes for the past 5 or 6 years. This is because by wearing Nike shoes, my toe nails were damaged many times. In one case, in the middle of a game, I could not move smoothly and could not concentrate on the game. After the game, when I took off the shoes, my toes were covered with blood because I had a nail torn off. Since then, I have been wearing shoes by another maker.

However, when I visited a shoe shop where I usually buy my shoes, unfortunately, shoes by that maker were not available, and I selected and purchased two pairs which seemed to be satisfactory. One of them was MAXAIR. On the day of the accident (August 11), I felt may be I had tied the shoelaces a little tighter than usual. In the past 50 years, I often tied shoelaces as tight as I did at that time or even a little tighter. Especially when someone is going to play in a big competitive game, I think it is quite natural to tie shoelaces a little tighter.

Roughly 3 months had passed since I started wearing the MAXAIR, and I had never tied the shoelaces as tight as I did on the day but still I tied them just a little tighter than usual. That was how I felt when I was tying the shoelaces. It is quite natural for a sport player to tie up a loosened shoelace or tighten a shoelace as we often see it on a sport scene. It is quite normal for a tennis player to do this during a tennis match.

It is natural that shoelaces become loose, and we all experience this while we play tennis. Nikeﾕs development team focused on this subject, i.e. shoelaces become loose in motion and pursued shoes with which shoelaces do not become loose. Finally it ended up with the completion and introduction to the market of this quite faulty MAXAIR.

If the position for tying shoelaces had been closer to the instep, this would have prevented the ankle from being injured because of a smaller burden on the ankle, or there would not have been such a problem. But at last, shoes ignoring the function of the ankle were developed and came into the market.

I suggest that you should develop shoelaces which do not stretch on the instep part but stretch where they are tied.

If I receive a similarly irresponsible answer from you as to the above mentioned two requests as I received before, I will let this fact known to the public using every possible medium in order to prevent another Nike user from being injured by a similar accident.

I hope to receive a satisfactory answer from your company, Nike, which has appointed so many super stars for promotion in the past and has marketed its name so successfully around the world in such a short time.

Sincerely yours,
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