The Joy of Johor Bahru — A First Step onto the World Stage (France 1998)

November 16, 1997, in the city of Johor Bahru in southern Malaysia. The date had long since rolled over, and the local night had grown deep. Only the stadium floodlights hung, suspended, in the darkness. Out on the pitch, the players of Japan and Iran were dragging their legs as though they had been running for hours on end.

The score was 2–2. Ninety minutes had settled nothing, and the match had gone to extra time. What is more, extra time in this era followed the “golden goal” rule — whoever scored first won then and there, in that very instant. The next goal would divide heaven from hell. The dream Japanese football had chased for more than half a century, the door marked a first World Cup appearance, hung entirely on this single night.

Carrying the Wound of Four Years Before

The story begins four years earlier. In 1993, in Doha. A goal conceded in stoppage time, and Japan lost its first World Cup berth right before its eyes. “The Agony of Doha” — those words had been carved into people’s hearts as a national trauma.

Millions in front of their television sets could not forget the sight of the players collapsing onto the pitch that night. For that very reason, the qualifying campaign for the 1998 France finals was not merely a series of football matches. It was something like a homework assignment for the whole nation: how do we overcome that wound?

Japan struggled through the final qualifying round. There was even the extraordinary event of the manager being replaced midway, and the team was driven to the brink again and again. Still it gathered points, and what it reached at last was a single decisive match called the play-off for Asia’s third qualifying spot. The opponent was a Middle Eastern power, Iran. Win and they were bound for France; lose and another four years of darkness awaited. Everything was compressed into these ninety minutes — no, into this single night, extra time and all.

A Verdict in the Dead of Night

The match traced a savage course. Japan took the lead, then conceded two goals to Iran and fell behind. Little time remained. On the faces of the Japanese supporters in the stands, the nightmare of four years before began to overlap with the present.

But Japan did not give up. They drew level late on, pulling the score back to 2–2 and forcing extra time. And once extra time began, the manager played his decisive hand. He withdrew a defensive player and used his fifth substitution to send onto the field Masayuki Okano, a forward whose weapon was outstanding pace. It was like a secret weapon, the final trump card.

The thirteenth minute of the second period of extra time. From a teammate who had won the ball in midfield, the team’s star, Hidetoshi Nakata, carried it forward on the dribble. From just outside the penalty area, Nakata let fly with a bold shot. Iran’s goalkeeper parried it. The loose ball — and there was one man, and one man only, sprinting in at full pace toward it.

The bench, the supporters, and the people watching their televisions back in distant Japan all erupted at once. Despite the dead of night, cheers went up on street corners across the country, and strangers embraced one another. “The Joy of Johor Bahru” — four years after the Agony of Doha, Japanese football had finally overwritten tragedy with joy.

The Wall of the World, and a Sense of What Was Possible

Once the afterglow of the joy had cooled, the real test arrived at last. June 1998, France. Standing on the World Cup stage for the first time, Japan was drawn into the same group as Argentina, Croatia, and Jamaica.

Judged by results alone, it was a bitter first attempt. A 0–1 loss to Argentina in the opener, and a 0–1 loss to Croatia next. Their hopes of reaching the knockout rounds were extinguished in just two matches. In the final group game against Jamaica, Masayuki Nakayama scored what was, for Japan, the first goal in its World Cup history — but the team let the match slip 1–2. Three matches, three defeats. Their final ranking, 31st out of the 32 competing nations, was a harsh one.

And yet what Japan gained from this tournament cannot be measured in points. Just how fast, how strong, how unforgiving the stage where the world’s best gather truly is — the players came to know it in their bodies. The young Hidetoshi Nakata in particular played without flinching against the world’s powers, and that sight would catch the eye of clubs in Europe.

A New Reality Beyond the Dream

From the night in Johor Bahru to the three matches in France. In the span of less than a year, Japanese football shifted its standing from “the side that dreams” to “the side that faces the reality of the world.”

For a long time, reaching the World Cup had been a distant goal in itself. To get there was the dream, the finish line. Yet once they had actually stood on that stage, they were made to realize that qualifying was not the finish line but merely a new starting line. The world was far too vast, and the rivals they had to catch were running far ahead.

Even so, a genuine change had taken root in people’s hearts. Waving the rising-sun flag in front of the television, roaring in support into the dead of night — football was beginning to dissolve, as a matter of course, into the everyday life of the nation. The Joy of Johor Bahru was the victory of a single match and, at the same time, a symbolic night on which the culture of football sank its roots deep into Japanese society.

And toward a Japan that had felt the wall of the world on its own skin for the first time, the next colossal stage was drawing near. This time it would not travel across the sea on a campaign abroad. National teams and supporters from all over the world were about to come to the towns of Japan — and of its neighbor, Korea. A World Cup hosted at home. It was the opening curtain of an unforgettable summer’s tale, the one in which football would become a truly national festival.