Gambare Japan! Do Your Best!
From Rugby World, December 2003
www.rugbyworld.com

Japan has formally decided to bid for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.  Richard Beard gauges the response in Tokyo to the opening weekend of RWC 2003

Here's the plan: Japan's Top League grows a local audience for elite rugby. Inspired by the presence of world stars, both players and coaches, the Japanese learn to compete with the best.  At the 2011 World Cup, the Cherry Blossoms seduce a nation by playing to win in their dazzling, home-based tournament.

And why not?

Koji Tokumasu, secretary of the JRFU, admits that nothing is ever quite that simple. However, Japan has the fourth largest rugby-playing population in the world, just behind South Africa.  It has more than a hundred years of rugby tradition and history: the future starts here.

During the opening weekend of RWC 2003, the Prince Chichibu Memorial stadium in the centre of Tokyo was thrown open for a live public screening of Japan's first game. In the week leading up to the match, Koji had no idea how many people would come. 

'A thousand!' he predicts hopefully, punctuating his English with the obligatory Japanese exclamation marks. He makes everything sound tremendous fun, and full of potential adventure.

'World Cup 2011! Let's try our best!'

Koji tells me that Japan will be throwing everything they have at their opening match. This is not the familiar sporting cliché, one game at a time.  He really means it. Everything.  And for rugby in Japan, nothing is more important just now than a flying start to the tournament.

By Sunday evening, when the Japanese meet Scotland in Townsville, most of the more favoured teams will have had a run-out. And somewhere in Tokyo, among a population of 27 million, every nation from the world of rugby has a home.

 My first mission is to watch the opening match - Australia v Argentina. Japan is one hour behind Sydney, and hitting the Tokyo streets at sixish in shirt-sleeves on a warm Friday evening is not a minority pursuit.  When I eventually arrive at The Clubhouse in Shinjuku, I realise that most of the one billion estimated TV audience for the opening ceremony have got there before me. A disembodied Australian voice is saying, very loudly and slowly, 'stadium engulfed by fire. Twenty fire-spirits have entered the arena.' 

Which certainly makes me turn my head, and up on one of the TV screens I see some fairies wafting about on round white balls.  I wonder what this can possibly mean.

When the politicians come on, I track down the bar's co-owner Garna Dowling, formerly of Nerang on the Gold Coast. He now plays full-back for 2nd Division team the Shimuzu Blue Sharks, and he reckons Australia has about as much chance of lifting the Webb-Ellis trophy as Japan. 

That is, unless coach Eddie Jones has a secret plan, a very secret plan, kept strictly under wraps for the tournament's decisive moment.  Garna fancies England, and I nudge and encourage him. He looks shiftily over both shoulders, and lowers his voice.  What he's about to say causes him acute physical pain.

'I've got a couple of hundred dollars on England.  It was the odds, mate.  The odds. I couldn't help it.'

The opening ceremony comes to an end.  There's cheering and clapping in the crowded bar as the players run out. When the camera pans down the pre-match line-ups, we feel the nerves on the set faces, feel with and for the players of both Australia and Argentina, every game they've ever played imploding into this moment in this stadium now.

It's going to be alright.  From a spectator's perspective, from our vantage point in this bar in Tokyo packed with Australians and Argentineans, the excitement is real.  Rugby World Cup 2003 has the buzz, it has the tingle. It's all going to work out just fine. 

The next day, I set out to watch the lunch-time All Blacks at a Roppongi sports cafe suggested by the New Zealand Embassy. It turns out to be empty, or nearly empty, just three long-faced Kiwis sitting solemnly at a table. I soon find out why. All the Tokyo New Zealanders are in Australia, of course they are. Who'd be in Tokyo with a World Cup on?

At the end of an impressive All Black master-class, not one of the New Zealanders manages a smile. One of them narrows his eyes, looking straight ahead.

'It's a beginning, mate. That's all it is.'

I pop along the street to Paddy Foley's, where the Irish are in good spirits, especially so at every sighting of Keith Wood.  This is an Irish bar with real Irish people in it, shipped over piece by piece from Ireland in green shirts with their hands pre-moulded for pint glasses.  As in Limerick, there are small groups of curious Japanese in the corners. The lads are still on Dublin time, so it's about ten in the morning and only their second pint.

'It's a beginning,' one of them tells me as the Romanians are clumsily dispatched, but this time I think it's a joke.

Which on the Saturday of the first weekend leaves only the French. Typically, the French in Tokyo have their own way of doing things, and they've organised a rendezvous for the match in a restaurant, La Merveille. The evening has been co-ordinated by the All French rugby club, a kind of foreign legion who play in the Tokyo leagues, and who define a successful season as 'win a few games, have good parties'.

This is a good party: there are families, children running about, women elaborately kissing each other, crepes, glass jugs of beer and cider. A hundred people pack into rows of seats for the match itself, and celebrate France's chances in the tournament.  No false modesty here: after another round of pichets, France are going to win it, twice if necessary.

On Sunday, Japan at last have their turn in front of the global rugby audience.  The Prince Chichibu stadium is filling up fast.  One side of the grandstand has been opened up, and Japanese families are taking their seats with their stadium beer and noodles.  There are far more than a thousand people, two thousand, three thousand, and a growing sense of expectation.

The Japan supporters think Japan can spring an upset because they're happy, shiney, ever-optimistic people.  I think Japan can win because I saw Scotland in their warm-up games.

Gambare Japan!   Do your best!

Here they come, and the crowd rises, and even though we're not there in Townsville in Australia, it feels as if we're there. The Japanese applaud their team, the referee, they even clap appreciatively their own supporters picked out in the Townsville crowd.

They all stand for the national anthem, and listen in silence to the strange swoon of the music, like wind down from the mountains.  They then stay on their feet as the Scots vow most sincerely to send proud Edward's army homeward. This doesn't cut much ice, in Tokyo. Nor in Townsville. The Scots seem confused, unprepared for the opposition.  Perhaps they imagined an easy victory.  Think again, as the song goes.

The Tokyo supporters value big tackles, and gleefully clap every toppled Scot. It's the Japanese team who are consistently innovative, in just the way the Scots used to be before they decided to cut out the brain-work and run Simon Taylor out in the backs.  It's never worked before, and it doesn't work now, the Japanese scything the big man down.

The Scots score a streaky try, then another, but the Japanese stay in contention.  The game is all Japan, at least from where I'm sitting.  There are shouts and squeals of mounting excitement every time Japan run the ball. A penalty! 3 points!  6 points! It's infectious! I'm infected!  A try! 

Easily the best try of the game, and everyone goes mental: Japan might actually win this.

The Japanese don't win.  Scotland fumble and blunder their way to some lucky scores, and as each one goes over I've never heard so many people sigh as one. No-one calls out or swears.  Thousands of people sigh a collective descent of breath, of unified disappointment and quiet resignation.

At the final whistle, the proud Cherry Blossoms earn a standing ovation. They've shown their spirit, and they're the undisputed stars of the opening weekend of the 2003 World Cup.

The last match is England's, and I'm in the Hobgoblin pub ('Recommended!' said Koji).  It's a good place to wind down after the adrenaline of the stadium, back to the phoney war of the favourites in the early rounds.  England are routinely effective, but the England supporters subdued.  I can't find anyone who dares say what everyone is thinking: 'England can win this.'  Everyone here knows that to voice this hope, especially in public, is asking for trouble from the god of sporting failure.  In England, one of the busier gods.

Nevertheless, in the Tokyo Hobgoblin, which is the very model of a pub in any English town from Penzance to Carlisle, the unspoken feeling is unanimous: this time, England expects.