A LONG HISTORY:
Soccer Played in Japan Since the 19th Century

	Japan's team for the 1999 World Youth Championship. (Go YANAGAWA / J.League Photos)

Soccer was introduced to Japan in 1873 by Lieutenant Commander A.L. Douglass, a British naval officer who had been invited to teach at the Japanese Naval Academy in Tokyo's Tsukiji district. This was just 10 years after the formation of the Football Association in England. Nearly 130 years later, soccer now rivals baseball as the most popular sport among kids in Japan.

A national association was formed to oversee soccer in Japan in 1921, and a national tournament was started the same year. This tournament is now called the All Japan Football Championship, known popularly as the Emperor's Cup. Japan joined FIFA, soccer's world governing body, in 1929 and began to grow stronger in the sport, mainly through the nation's university students. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics the Japanese soccer team beat a very good Swedish team 3-2 to advance to the quarterfinals.

Sadly, the progress Japan had been making toward becoming a world-class soccer nation was halted by World War II. Japan had entered the World Cup for the first time in 1938, but it withdrew because of fighting in China. As its only rival in Asia was the Dutch East Indies, the team would have had an excellent chance of making it to the World Cup finals. Japanese soccer fans had to wait another 60 years for their team to make their first World Cup appearance in 1998.

Good Results at the Tokyo and Mexico Olympics
Defeat in World War II in 1945 hit Japan hard. Soccer was not on many people's minds for a few years afterward, but the nation gradually began to recover and rejoined FIFA in 1950. Japan participated in qualifying matches for the 1954 World Cup, where it played South Korea twice - drawing 2-2 and losing 5-1 - and was unable to advance to the finals. Twenty years after its last appearance in the Olympics, the Japanese soccer team took part in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, where it was eliminated in the first round. Japan's eventual rise as a soccer country began at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

In the run-up to the 1964 Olympics, which would be held on Japan's home ground, the Japan Football Association invited German coach Dettmar Cramer to help the Japanese team prepare. Cramer, who is now called the "father of modern Japanese soccer," worked to establish a strong amateur soccer program that would strengthen the base of potential players for the national team. Alongside this effort, Japan's first nationwide soccer league, the Japan Soccer League, was established in 1965. These plans gradually bore fruit, and the national team captured the bronze medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. That team's ace was Kunishige Kamamoto, who scored seven goals during the tournament. Kamamoto, now the vice president of the JFA, is still viewed as the best Japanese striker ever to play the game.

But the triumph at the Mexico City Olympics was short-lived. While many had high hopes for the national team that would take part in the 1970 World Cup, Japan was eliminated in qualifying after Kamamoto withdrew due to illness. The national team continued to fail in the qualifying rounds of subsequent Olympics and World Cups, and the popularity of the JSL, which had come from the national team's strong performance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, quickly declined.

By 1977 average attendance at JSL games was only 1,773, and it became clear that Japan needed a professional league. Momentum began to gather in the late 1980s, leading to the creation of the J. League in 1993. Signing professional contracts made Japanese players more determined to perform well, and under head coach Marius Johan Ooft from the Netherlands, the Japanese team came very close to qualifying for the World Cup finals in 1994. And in 1996 soccer became a national interest when it was decided that Japan and South Korea would co-host the 2002 World Cup. Shortly after that, the Japanese team finally qualified to take part in the World Cup for the first time in 1998, and with the construction of world-class stadiums and practice grounds for the 2002 World Cup, the outlook today is much brighter than in the 1980s.

High-School Students Now Prefer Soccer to Baseball
Japan was once very competitive in such sports as volleyball and wrestling but has not done so well recently. As these sports became popular around the world, Japanese athletes were unable to keep up with athletes from other countries in terms of physique, power, and speed. Some people have suggested that Japanese people might be better suited to playing soccer.

The skill to control a ball with one's feet, quick movement, the ability to make good decisions, and teamwork are all more important in soccer than the size of a team's players. In fact, many of the world's greatest soccer players, like Brazil's Pele and Argentina's Maradona, are of average height and weight. If children in Japan have the chance to play and watch soccer from an early age, in the future there will be more Japanese players who can compete at a world-class level. Actually, a number of good players are already emerging in places like Shizuoka Prefecture, which has long been committed to teaching elementary- and middle-school kids about soccer.

The birth of the J. League and the increasing number of Japanese soccer players going to play abroad have stimulated interest in the sport, especially among young people. There are already more kids playing high-school soccer than high-school baseball, and the Japanese under-20 team took second place in the 1999 World Youth Championship. If the discovery and training of talented players continues, Japan should be able to achieve even greater success. With this in mind, this year the J. League started an academy system in which a wide range of soccer players, from young kids to aspiring professionals, will receive training.