Nadeshiko, and the Future — World Champions and Beyond

In the spring of 2011, Japan lay at the bottom of a deep grief. The great earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region in March took an enormous number of lives and tore up, by the roots, the towns, the daily lives, and the hearts of the people. The whole country looked downward, feeling almost guilty even to laugh. It was in the summer of such a year that, from Germany on the far side of the earth, a report no one had foreseen arrived.

Nadeshiko Japan had become champions of the world.

In the long history of football, men’s game included, this was the first time a country outside Europe and South America — and a country of Asia — had stood at the summit of a World Cup. “The world” that nearly a hundred years of Japanese football had spent chasing. The first to plant a flag at its highest point were the women players, who had gone on fighting in places long left in the shade.

Beyond an Era That Went Unrewarded

The summit on which the Nadeshiko stood by no means lay at the end of a smooth road. Japanese women’s football had long been placed in harsh conditions. Spectators were sparse, coverage was scant, and it was hard even to make a living from football alone. Many players kept kicking the ball even so, balancing it with work or study.

Their ace, Homare Sawa, had supported the Japan women’s national team since she was still a girl, and knew the unrewarded years longer than anyone. That is exactly why their football held not flashiness but tenacity. Against opponents who outmatched them in physique, they ran to the very end, kept the ball moving, and never gave up. It was a way of fighting all their own, honed and honed within an unprivileged environment.

July 17, the Night of a Miracle

The stage for the final was Frankfurt, Germany. In Japanese time, it was the small hours of July 18.

The match became a breathless contest. Even after conceding the first goal to the United States, Japan drew level through a goal by Aya Miyama. Pushed ahead of again in extra time, the Nadeshiko did not break. In the dying moments of the second period of extra time, Homare Sawa twisted her body in front of the opposing goal and forced home an eleventh-hour equalizer. It was the obstinate thrust of an ace who had carried an unrewarded era upon her back.

After the title was decided, the Nadeshiko players spread a great banner across the pitch. Written on it were words of thanks for the support sent from all over the world in the wake of the disaster. To turn the moment of their own glory, first of all, into gratitude toward the people who had supported them — the sight of it moved the whole world. Their victory became, beyond the bounds of football, one great encouragement that gave heart to an entire wounded nation.

The Place a Hundred Years of Striving Reached

Here, let us look back once at the road we have come.

In the Meiji era, through hired foreign experts and through schools, a single ball crossed the sea. In 1921 the association was born; before the war Japan worked a miracle in Berlin; after the war it was rebuilt from the foundations by the hand of one German named Cramer, and grasped a bronze medal in Mexico. After a long winter the J.League touched off a green revolution; Japan swallowed its tears in Doha and rejoiced in Johor Bahru; the game became a national culture at the World Cup it hosted itself; and the players crossed the sea and brought home the world’s standard. Then, in 2011, the women players at last stood at the summit of the world.

When “Champions of the World” Stopped Being a Fairy Tale

And the story continues on into this very moment.

For Japan, a World Cup title was once a fairy tale one hesitated even to speak aloud. To take part, to survive into the round of 16 — those were, for a long time, the realistic goals. But that landscape is becoming a thing of the past. The Nadeshiko showed the view from the summit of the world; at Qatar in 2022 the men beat Germany and Spain, two nations that had known the title; and players who take leading roles at Europe’s great clubs have come up one after another. A well-prepared youth development environment, exports scattered across the world, and a market value matured into a presence to be “bought” — at the end of all that accumulation, the “world title” that was once only a dream is at last coming within range.

In fact, in recent years voices from within the men’s national team — among players and those around them — have come to raise, not a modest “quarterfinals,” but clearly the World Cup title as a serious goal. That is no longer reckless boasting. It has become words spoken with feet on the ground, as a tangible sense held by players who fight the world’s strongest sides as a daily matter. A hundred years ago this country did not even know how to kick a ball; now it aims to stand on the side that seriously chases the world title. The dream has changed shape from mere words of hope into a realistic plan — and the long story of chasing the world is, at last, being rewritten into a story of going out to take the world. Whether it can do so, views differ.

The latest chapter of that challenge is, even now, just beginning to move. In 2026, the first ever World Cup co-hosted by three nations — the United States, Canada, and Mexico — has opened. As of June 2026, when this piece is written, that tournament has only just begun. Japan, too, is heading onto the pitch on the stage of a new continent, an unprecedented goal in its heart. How the result will turn out, no one yet knows. But what is certain is that this country has left far behind the stage of “it is the taking part that counts,” and has begun to walk with its eyes set on the summit itself.

Toward the Next Hundred Years

The Nadeshiko’s world title was not a goal. On the road that followed came not only glory but also, many times over, periods of frustration and stagnation. For both the men and the women to become a presence that steadily eyes the summit of the world, much homework still remains. And yet that is fine. For a story, if it ends at the summit, dies right there.

Today, in Japan’s youth development grounds, far more children than ever before are kicking the ball in well-prepared environments. Aiming abroad is no longer a special resolve but an ordinary dream. A hundred years ago, this country did not even know how to kick a ball; now it has become a country that sends talent out to the world and aims in earnest for the world title.

What landscape will Japanese football see in the next hundred years? A men’s World Cup triumph — or some wholly new story that no one has yet imagined? What is certain is that the protagonist of that story is, even at this very moment, somewhere on a schoolyard or a riverbank, chasing a ball in utter absorption. From that day when a single ball crossed the sea, the baton has never once been broken, and even now it goes on rolling at someone’s feet.

Thank you for keeping company with this long journey to the very end. If the hundred-year march by which Japanese football caught up with the world and spun a story of its own has lit a small lamp in your heart, there is no greater joy than that. The next hundred years have already begun.

— Japanese Football: A Century’s Road to the World · End —