Norisuke Higashikata I

Norisuke is a grown man of a bit above average height and moderate build. Small tinted spectacles sit on his face above a short beard, and his hair is cropped very close and thin, leaving his scalp marked by many small patches. His most curious feature is a pair of navels, where his forebears each had only one.

A streak of vanity runs through Norisuke, who keeps reminding others of his first-place standing after the fourth stage and makes a show of drinking before anyone else when getting water. He takes particular pride in his two navels, delighted that the oddity landed him in a newspaper. For all that boastfulness, age has not dulled his instincts; he manages to read Hot Pants' hidden nature from her recoil at the mere thought of touching one of those navels.

By Tsurugi Higashikata's account of the clan's superstitions for warding off sickness demons, Norisuke, as the firstborn son of his house, was brought up dressed as a girl until he turned twelve. During the race itself he seizes the top spot in the race's fourth leg and, while watering his horse, shows Hot Pants the article celebrating his double navels, even offering to let her touch them before she refuses in disgust. In the fifth stage he lingers in a cornfield during Gyro and Johnny's fight with Sandman, is briefly mistaken for the enemy Stand's owner, and is stabbed from behind, though he turns up unharmed afterward, apparently mended by Hot Pants. He finishes the Steel Ball Run in second place, having amassed 353 points overall, and in the aftermath he is seen saluting Johnny aboard ship beside a young woman later revealed as his daughter Rina. In the years that follow, chronicled in JoJolion, he pours his winnings into a thriving business importing foreign fruit, a company his descendants still run in 2011, and he sets down a full written record of the race complete with a family tree naming his wife Teru and their four children. He dies in 1931 of natural causes.