Japan’s rugby story: Past, present and future
Ahead of the Rugby World Cup, which is breaking new ground by taking the tournament to Asia, Graeme Copas takes an in-depth look at the hosts.
Author of The Rugby World Cup 2019 Book: Everything You Need to Know About the Rugby World Cup, the experienced journalist delves into how rugby has progressed in Japan.
Rugby in Japan
Overview
World Rugby, the sport’s governing body, broke new ground by awarding Japan the right to host the 2019 World Cup.
It will be the first time this nation, and indeed Asia, will have staged the tournament, but it will be building on a proud 150-year tradition of the playing game.
Japan has the fourth largest number of rugby players in the world at around 125,000 with more than 3,600 clubs.
Rugby is its fifth most popular team sport (behind baseball, football, basketball and volleyball), while the highest attendance at a rugby match is 66,999 between Waseda University and Meiji University in 1952.
Attracting elite players from around the world since it was created in 2003, the most senior level of club rugby in Japan is called the Top League.
Japan is no rugby backwater, but rather a country with a deep rugby backstory.
History
The first rugby club in Japan was the Yokohama Football Club which started playing in 1866.
The members and officers were Europeans and included alumni of Rugby School and Winchester College in England.
It is believed that the first Japanese players to participate in the sport were students at Keio University who were introduced to the game by professor Edward Bramwell Clarke, who was born in Yokohama, and Ginnosuke Tanaka, both Cambridge University graduates.
Clarke said that he wanted to give his students something constructive to do, as they ‘seemed to have nothing to occupy them out of doors in the after-summer and after-winter days’.
The sport slowly gained a foothold in the country and even recovered quickly after World War II.
In September 1945, less than a month after the end of the war, an advertisement was posted for rugby players in Hokkaido.
At the end of that same year, Kobe Steel encouraged its workers to play the game, setting a precedent for the later involvement of businesses in Japanese rugby.
Growing pains
Rugby grew in popularity and participation during the 70s and 80s, but this also led to issues around the game being fully amateur, something the game’s officials were keen to uphold.
Traditionally many Japanese teams were part of large corporations, and the players were employees of these companies.
In the 70s, large numbers of foreign players started playing in Japan in corporate teams and, although technically they were amateurs, they were paid more for being ‘employees’ than fellow workers.
Former Australia and Japan player Ian Williams, who played for Kobe Steelers, estimated in 1994 that there were 100 foreigners playing rugby in Japan, receiving double the local wage, and that few had ‘real jobs’.
Japan was not alone in this pre-professional era of blurring the line between amateurism and professionalism.
The game today
The professional Top League kicked off in 2003 featuring 12 teams, which grew to 14 in 2006 and then 16 in 2013.
The Top League is played during the off-season of Super Rugby, the Pacific-based franchise league which, until 2020, has Japanese team the Sunwolves among its member clubs.
The most successful Top League teams are Toshiba Brave Lupus and Suntory Sungoliath, who have both won the title five times, although the current champions are Kobelco Steelers.
The Top League pays high salaries to world-class foreign players and a small number of Japanese players, but most local-based players are still amateur.
It was widely reported that in 2012 South African Jaque Fourie was paid $700,000 for a season by Kobelco Steelers, making him the world’s highest-paid player at the time.
If rugby in Japan is to continue to grow, and perhaps become the driving force behind an Asian-based Super League, the importance of the 2019 Rugby World Cup in providing extra revenue and exposure cannot be understated.
The World Cup will, if nothing else, underscore Japan’s long association with rugby.
Written by Graeme Copas, it is published by Meyer & Meyer Sport, Europe’s leading specialist sports publisher.
Thoroughly researched, the book is a comprehensive guide to the third biggest sporting competition in the world – covering the history, the build-up, the statistics, the 20 teams, star players, and the schedule of this showcase rugby union tournament, while providing talking points, in-depth analysis and insightful interviews.