So long then, and thank you, Japan. Bruises fade, bones heal, tears dry, and even the pain of this will give way, in time, to resounding pride at everything this team have achieved in these last few weeks, and the four consecutive victories that came before this last defeat. Because whichever of the four sides left in this tournament go on to win it, this will be remembered as Japan’s World Cup. Not just because of the job they have done of hosting it but for the way their team, representing what is, in the large part, still an amateur league, lit up the sport with their bravery, wit, and creativity.
Japanese fans have a saying, “ganbare!” It is another one of those fiddly words that people tend to split three ways when they translate it: “Do your best!”, “hang in!”, “go for it!” And that’s exactly what they did. When Faf de Klerk scored the try that decided the game, in the 66th minute, Japan were 18 points down and there were 14 minutes to play. The game had gone then, but their indomitable captain Michael Leitch pulled them all together into a circle underneath the posts and shouted at them to go again. Which they did. All the way to within arm’s reach of the South African try-line.
South Africa stole the ball back from a lineout and ran the ball all the way back again. Makazole Mapimpi scored their third try, which should have been the killing blow. The gap was 23 points now. But Leitch was still exhorting his players to give more. And in the last few minutes, they hit South Africa with some of the hardest tackles anyone had made all match. The game ran on long after the sound of the gong, till at last Handré Pollard realised the only way South Africa were ever going to finish Japan off was by booting the ball deep into touch.
“The last five minutes of that Test match showed what type of team this is,” said their coach Jamie Joseph. “A team that keep getting back up.”
They needed to. Because they kept getting knocked down. Physically it was a mismatch. Their starting team gave away all of 67kg, which is about as much as their little scrumhalf Yutaka Nagare weighs himself. As if they didn’t have enough muscle, South Africa had stacked their bench with six more forwards. It was a brutish plan. They bullied Japan in the early scrums, and did such a number on their line-out that it became a 50-50 proposition. Most of all, they damaged them with their unstoppable rolling maul, a tactic they could not have been any keener on if you had served it grilled in a bun with onions.
Their defence was absolutely relentless too, the midfield busier than Shinjuku station in rush hour, and the breakdown packed out like a commuter carriage. They strangled Japan, Joseph said, by denying them the time and space they needed to work in.
For all their bewitchingly clever kicks, flicks and tricks, no-look passes and intricate loop-moves, they rarely made it into open space. The one time they did have a clear chance was when Timothy Lafaele put away their dazzling winger Kenki Fukuoka, who broke down the left wing in a run that lit the touch paper on a series of 13 phases that died out right under the posts.
The crowd were roaring for them now. Never louder, than when Japan won a penalty against the South African scrum. And in the quieter moments, when their nerves started to get the better of them, the thousands of Irish fans, who ad bought tickets for this match in the expectation their team was going to be playing here instead, did their singing for them.
They bellowed loud and ceaseless rounds of Stand Up For The Japanese. They have become the rest of the world’s second favourite team.
The question, then, is when will we see them again? Joseph was too diplomatic to get into the question of what comes next, now their tournament’s over – “I’m just the coach” he said – but the people who run the game are going to have to answer to that same question. The only full-time professional side in Japan, the Sunwolves are going to be booted out of Super Rugby at the end of the 2020 season, and there’s no guarantee that Japan’s run of fixtures against the top teams is going to carry on either, since a lot of the opposition is going to be less keen to come visit once the World Cup has come and gone.
When they were young, these Japanese players didn’t even dream of a night like this. They couldn’t, because it seemed so wildly unlikely, well out beyond what anyone here ever really thought was possible.
The team had won one World Cup game in 28 years of trying, against Zimbabwe in 1991. But there are young players out there now who have entirely new ideas about what is possible. They just need the chance to prove it. Japan didn’t quit on the game. The game cannot quit on them.
