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Series ・ 10 parts

Japanese Football: A Century's Road to the World

From the closing days of the shogunate into the Meiji era, a single ball carried across the ocean gradually grew into a national undertaking. How did a pastime first kicked about in the foreign settlements of port towns lead to the birth of an association in 1921 and the beginnings of the Emperor's Cup? The story of a century of Japanese football sets out from this quiet origin.

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  1. 01 A Ball Crossed the Sea — The Game Arrives and the JFA Is Born From the closing days of the shogunate into the Meiji era, a single ball carried across the ocean gradually grew into a national undertaking. How did a pastime first kicked about in the foreign settlements of port towns lead to the birth of an association in 1921 and the beginnings of the Emperor's Cup? The story of a century of Japanese football sets out from this quiet origin.
  2. 02 The Miracle of Berlin — A Prewar Challenge and a Postwar New Start The 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the night Japan came back from 0–2 to beat the favorites, Sweden. The “Miracle of Berlin” that startled Europe was, however, swallowed up by the vast rupture of war. The scorched-earth restart, the budding of company-team football — this is the story of how Japanese football came to make its second start.
  3. 03 The Bronze of Mexico — The Age of Cramer and Kamamoto To trap the ball, to strike it — Japan learned those simple basics from a single German. The seeds that Dettmar Cramer planted bore fruit as a bronze medal in the thin air of Mexico City in 1968. This is the story of Japanese football's first golden age, when Kunishige Kamamoto and Ryuichi Sugiyama astonished the world.
  4. 04 The Long Winter — The Eve of the J.League The bronze of Mexico had been the summit. After the Olympics, Japanese football sank into a long slump — empty stadiums, amateur players whose talent went unrewarded, and an ever-widening gap with the world. Yet at the bottom of that winter, a quiet yearning for professionalism began to grow. This is the story of the eve of the J.League's birth.
  5. 05 The Birth of the J.League — 1993, the Green Revolution A nation that had known only empty stadiums was suddenly washed over, on 15 May 1993, by the roar of fifty-nine thousand voices. Saburo Kawabuchi's vision of community-rooted clubs, and the green clubs that shed their corporate names. This is the story of the night Japanese football took flight into society.
  6. 06 The Agony of Doha — A World Cup One Step Away 28 October 1993, Doha in Qatar. Japan stood just seconds away from a first World Cup appearance. But in stoppage time, a single corner kick swept it all away. Why did that night, which became a national trauma, become the springboard for the next leap forward?
  7. 07 The Joy of Johor Bahru — A First Step onto the World Stage (France 1998) November 1997, in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Late in extra time, deep in the night, a speedster slid in to poke the ball home — and in that instant a dream held for more than half a century came true at last. A first World Cup. And a year later, Japan would come face to face with the world itself.
  8. 08 The 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup — A Festival Embraced by a Nation In early summer 2002, the World Cup came to Asian soil for the first time — and to Japan. Troussier's young national team reached the knockout rounds for the first time, and the islands were swept up in a fervor like nothing before. This is the story of the summer in which football changed from the property of a handful of fans into a culture shared by the whole nation.
  9. 09 The Age of the Exports — From Hidetoshi Nakata to the World In the summer of 1998, a single young man crossed the sea to Italy on his own. The road Hidetoshi Nakata opened was turned into an everyday sight by the 2010s exports such as Keisuke Honda and Shinji Kagawa, and then pushed wider still by modern stars such as Takefusa Kubo and Kaoru Mitoma. This is the story of three generations of the age of the exports, all the way to the present moment in which nearly the entire national team plays in Europe.
  10. 10 Nadeshiko, and the Future — World Champions and Beyond In 2011, with Japan wounded by disaster, Nadeshiko Japan delivered the news of becoming champions of the world. The final chapter, looking at the summit reached at the end of a hundred years of striving — and at the present moment of the men's team, which, having built up its youth development, its exports in Europe and a matured market, has now begun to aim in earnest for the world title at the 2026 World Cup currently under way.