Sports

Lost in translation? World Cup has arrived in Japan but don’t tell everybody | Andy Bull


There were six people in the bar, five friends and now one stranger too. I would have backed right out but then the barmaid said she wanted to practice her English. She’d been taking lessons, she explained, because she’s so excited about the Tokyo Olympics and is sure she will enjoy it more if she can talk to all the tourists who’ll be coming here next year. By the time I’d finished my drink we had established that no, this wasn’t my first time in Japan, that I have family in Sapporo, and, after I’d made a clumsy mime of typing on the bar, that I was here on business, working as a sports journalist. The one thing we got stuck on was exactly which sport I was here to cover.

“Rugby,” I said. “Rugby?” she replied. “Yes, rug-by.” There didn’t seem to be any other syllables left to try and stress, so in the end I pulled out my phone and Googled a photo for her. “Ah, rugby,” she said. Yes, rugby, I replied, trying to copy the way she said it, the World Cup. “Oh yes,” she said, unimpressed. “When does that start?” You’ll hear a lot of spurious official statistics about the millions of Japanese people who have just discovered rugby in the next few weeks, less about the millions more who, like her, remain entirely oblivious to it.

You notice them in Tokyo, though. They had 15,000 locals turn up to welcome the Welsh in Kitakyushu, but it feels like the World Cup has got a lot of competition here. The baseball is on, and the autumn sumo too. So it really seems a wildly brave and audacious move for World Rugby to bring their main event, one of the biggest tournaments on earth, to country where their game is a minority sport.

According to a recent white paper there are around 100,000 registered rugby players in Japan, which is around a third as many as badminton has, a quarter as many as volleyball, a tenth as many as football. The average match in the domestic rugby league pulls in a crowd of around 5,000.

The organising committee’s own research shows that four years ago 49% of the people here weren’t even aware that Japan was going to host this competition. Among women from the barmaid’s generation, the figure was just over 25%. They’ve been running that survey every four months for the last four years, and are very proud of the fact that, after four years of marketing, public awareness has risen to 80%. But of course flip that around and it still means that, even by the most optimistic measure, one in five people here don’t even know the World Cup is on, never mind who is playing in it.

Big sport doesn’t usually work this way. There has been nothing quite like it since Fifa took the football World Cup to the USA in 1994. World Rugby is hoping the gamble will open up a new market. They need it to. There aren’t many hosts left among the top rugby nations who can guarantee them the kind of reliable financial return that has allowed them to spend £64m in four years developing the game in Japan and the other tier two nations. England is one, France is another, and it is no surprise that one of those hosted the World Cup before this, and the other will host the World Cup after it.

Japan players celebrate their victory over South Africa in the 2015 World Cup, arguably the biggest shock the tournament has ever witnessed.



Japan players celebrate their victory over South Africa in the 2015 World Cup, arguably the biggest shock the tournament has ever witnessed. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters

Early the next morning the Japanese players who are going to be doing the missionary work were busy rehearsing their lineout drills at the Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium in central Tokyo. The Japanese may love a plucky underdog, back in 2003 a racehorse called Haru Urara (“the shining star of losers everywhere” ) became a national celebrity after it lost 100 races in a row, but rugby’s popularity rides on how well the national team are doing. The average league attendances almost doubled after Japan beat South Africa in 2015. And right now, it feels like there is an awful lot depending on whether or not they can do it again against Ireland or Scotland in the pool stages.

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The Prince Chichibu ground is the “spiritual home of Japanese rugby”– they have been playing here for 70 years, but won’t be during this tournament. There are plans to knock it down soon after the competition is over so it can be used as a car park for the impressive new Olympic Stadium which is being built just up the road.

That was supposed to be ready in time to host the first and last matches of this tournament, but then the government scrapped the original plans and started over, so construction slowed down and now it is due to open a month after the World Cup finishes.

Never mind the baseball, then, these games are very much in the shadow of those Games. The Olympics seem to get nine minutes of airtime for every one afforded the rugby, it’s the Olympic logo that is on the side of all the taxi cabs, the Olympic mascots mugging on all the billboards.

So rugby has got to make every use of this little six-week window. The game has got to show the best side of itself, be fast, hard-fought, free-flowing. And that is how they are selling it on the fliers and adverts they have put up around the city. My favourite of them is the poster for the spectators’ village which has been set up out in Fuchu to the west of the city, with the slogan “Let’s watch the great power of live battle of men on the big screen!” Even an Ebisu barmaid might be tempted by an invitation like that.



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