The Japanese Dream: Soccer Culture towards the New Millennium

Abstract

A British major, Archfield Douglas, and the soldiers under his command introduced the game of soccer to Japan in September 1873. They were visiting the country to give training instructions to the Japanese Navy. In between the sessions, they played soccer; the watching Japanese assumed the game was a British version of Kemari, an ancient Japanese ballgame (Japan Football Association 1996: 42–3). Soccer was mostly played in Yokohama and Kobe, areas where the majority of foreigners lived. Like many other sports, soccer spread and developed mainly via college students. Through the influence of the school systems, soccer became popular among boys who became men who in 1917 represented the country in the third Far Eastern Games staged in Tokyo, the first international championship to take place in Japan (JFA 1996: 35). By way of encouragement the English Football Association in 1919 sent a silver FA Cup trophy to Japan assuming that the Japanese Football Association (JFA) had already been established. It was not in fact organised until 1921 and affiliated to the Japanese Amateur Sports Association in 1921 then affiliated to FIFA in 1929.