By Stephen Wade / The Associated Press
YOKOHAMA, Japan—Like tennis star Naomi Osaka and National Basketball Association (NBA) player Rui Hachimura, Japan’s rugby team offers a diverse and slightly different look for an insular, but changing country.
Of the 23 players who earned Japan’s historic first appearance in the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals on Sunday, only 11 were born to Japanese parents.
The rest were a mix of nationalities with various ties to Japan, who held out Scotland 28-21 in a thrilling match before a partisan crowd of 68,000 at Yokohama Stadium.
“I believe [the team] can be a mirror of this Japanese society,” Hideto Itami said in English, alongside his wife Chikako at the match. “Gradually, we have so many foreigners as a part of Japanese society.”
Fans held up signs that read “We Are One Team” to celebrate the milestone victory, and the rest of Japan is becoming convinced. There was criticism of the amount of foreigners when the squad was announced in August, and that has died down as the team has gone on an unprecedented winning run through its pool.
The win against Samoa last weekend drew a record TV audience in Japan of 46.1 percent on free-to-air Nippon Television. Local media said it was the most-watched sporting event of the year in Japan, surpassing Osaka’s win in the Australian Open final. That mark was expected to be shattered on Sunday night, with the promise of a quarterfinal next weekend against two-time champion South Africa.
Fly-half Yu Tamura, the leading scorer in the tournament, was born to Japanese parents, along with winger Kenki Fukuoka, who has four tries in three matches.
Several players are eligible for Japan because of rugby’s three-year residency rule, including South Korean-born Koo Ji-won, New Zealand-born Luke Thompson and Australia-born James Moore.
Captain Michael Leitch was born in New Zealand with Fijian heritage, but came to Japan to study when he was 15 and speaks Japanese better than English. He’s the face of Japanese rugby, and his sponsors have placed him in media everywhere.
Winger Kotaro Matsushima was born in South Africa, to a Japanese mother and a Zimbabwean father.
And Jamie Joseph—a former New Zealand forward—switched to play for Japan in 1999, and now coaches the Brave Blossoms.
To be fair, Scotland had several non-Scotland-born players.
Some children in Japan with one non-Japanese parent have often been bullied and called hafu from the English word “half.” The demeaning term could fall out of use as more and more Japanese have a non-Japanese-born parent and immigrant roots.
“I’d like all Japanese people to understand the changing of Japanese society,” Itami said, with the Chinese characters meaning “To win” painted on his right cheek. “We do not need to care if the blood is purely Japanese or not. If they understand the Japanese way, that’s all that’s needed.”
His wife had “I Love Japan” painted on her left cheek and was wearing a good-luck charm from a Shinto shrine.
“Honestly, many younger people—even Japan-born—sometimes do not understand our history or our culture,” Imani said.
Japanese Asuka Mitachi stood nearby, watching as women in kimonos and men in kilts passed by as she returned to her seat. Some Japanese women wore tartan plaid skirts, topped off by Japan’s red and white jersey. Many carried fans that opened to reveal the word “Try.”
“We’re a very international team,” Mitachi said. “Very much the future. The future of Japan is international.”
ALL BLACKS, IRISH RENEW RIVALRY
THE quarterfinal meeting between Ireland and New Zealand at the Rugby World Cup comes with a strong feeling of reckoning.
Ireland hadn’t beaten New Zealand in 28 matches over 111 years until its 40-29 victory at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2016.
It did so again, 16-9, in Dublin in 2018, establishing Ireland as the one team in world rugby at present that regularly has the All Blacks’ number.
Ireland went on, after Wales’s brief tenure atop the world rankings, to become the No. 1-ranked team just ahead of the Rugby World Cup, displacing New Zealand from a spot it had occupied since the ranking system began.
Against that background, the match between Ireland and defending champion New Zealand at Tokyo on Saturday, which appears the most competitive of the quarterfinals, also seems a reckoning between the teams.
It occurs earlier in the tournament than expected. Japan’s wins over Ireland and Scotland in Pool A went against pretournament predictions and saw the hosts emerge atop their pool, forcing second-place Ireland into a quarterfinal against Pool C winner New Zealand.
“The best part is we know who we’re playing. They’re a quality side, they’ve been No. 1 this year,” All Blacks Coach Steve Hansen said Monday. “The last three results are ‘loss, win, loss’ so there won’t be any complacency in our camp. It’s pretty exciting; we’re right where we want to be.”
Hansen said last year’s encounter was a “titanic struggle” and Ireland was slightly better on the day.
“It’s taken them a long time to get there, and obviously they enjoyed it,” Hansen said of the drought-breaking win, “so they decided to keep doing it.”
With more at stake this weekend, Hansen said the game would have a different feel to recent head-to-head meetings.
“The big difference here is it’s a do or die game for both teams. Both teams are in good nick—fresh, excited.”
If there is an outside influence on the match it is the fact New Zealand’s last scheduled pool match against Italy on Saturday was canceled because of Typhoon Hagibis, meaning they will go into the knockout round without a match since October 6 when they beat Namibia 71-9 in a muddling performance.
Ireland go into the quarterfinal on the back of a much more emphatic 45-7 win over Samoa on Saturday, achieved with only 14 men. That gives Ireland the better preparation, leaving New Zealand to do the bulk of its lead-up work on the training field.
Ireland fly-half Johnny Sexton was hopeful that Ireland’s upset loss to Japan was the bad game they needed to get out of their system before the knockout rounds. Ireland has lost quarterfinals at the last two World Cups after being dominant in the pool stage. The fact they’ve beaten New Zealand twice since the last World Cup was also a boost.
“I suppose we can take a little bit of confidence from the last few times we’ve played them,” Sexton said. “I’m hoping that having lost a pool game that we’ve got that quarterfinal performance out of our system that we’ve had in other tournaments.
“The difference now is we’re not favorites going into this quarterfinal whereas we were in the last two. So we’re building nicely.”
The match is one of two—the other is between Japan and South Africa—which will involve an evident contrast in styles.
New Zealand and Japan will both attempt to play an adventurous style, while Ireland and South Africa will attempt to slow down the game.
Image credits: AP