Tanaka began skating in 2002. and was named to compete at the
2018 Winter Olympics,
2018 Four Continents Championships and the
2018 World Championships. At the
2018 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, Tanaka set new personal bests in the short program, free skate and overall, finishing fourth. He placed eighteenth at the
2018 Winter Olympics after placing twentieth in the short and fifteenth in the free. He ended the season with a thirteenth-place finish at the World Championships.
2018–2019 season Again beginning the season at the
Ondrej Nepela Trophy, Tanaka won the bronze medal. He placed eighth at both of his two Grand Prix assignments, the
2018 Grand Prix of Helsinki and the
2018 Internationaux de France. At the
Japanese National Championships, he won the bronze medal behind
Shoma Uno and
Daisuke Takahashi. He placed seventh at the
2019 Four Continents Championships, and fourteenth at the
2019 World Championships.
2019–2020 season . Tanaka began his season at the
2019 U.S. Classic, where he won the gold medal. Tanaka's first
Grand Prix assignment was the
2019 Skate Canada International in
Kelowna. Whilst traveling from a training session at the arena, Tanaka and fellow Japanese skater
Marin Honda were in a car accident that led to both being briefly hospitalized. Tanaka was left with a sore knee. which was a spin-off of the cross-genre
Hyoen series, starring
Daisuke Takahashi.
2021–2022 season Beginning the
Grand Prix at the
2021 Skate Canada International, Tanaka finished in tenth place. As a coach, his current students include
Nozomu Yoshioka and
Haru Kakiuchi. In the spring of 2023 it was announced that Tanaka would be portraying
Roronoa Zoro in the show
One Piece on Ice. In 2025 Tanaka was cast as
Sasa Morihiko in the storytelling ice show
Hyoen – Mirror-Patterend Demon , starring
Daisuke Takahashi and
Takahisa Masuda. It was the first time he had to speak dialogue in an ice show. == Programs ==