japan today > japan > features

X-League's road to the Rice Bowl

Tama Miyake

Bowing to the gods of the gridiron MASAAKI KATOU

TOKYO — The lobby of the Furukawa Denko gymnasium looks like the emergency ward at St Luke's Hospital. Tsukasa Tashiro, a 25-year-old civil engineer, has twin ice packs the size of cantaloupes on each knee. Hiroshi Hikuchi, a 27-year-old salesman, is hunched over with a slab of ice on his shoulder and nursing a gash over his right eye. And Masayuki Asakura, a 27-year-old architect, is regaling his friends about the last time he was injured and forced to do work from his hospital bed alongside two teammates.

It's an overcast Sunday afternoon in the middle of August and after a grueling day of full-contact scrimmage and wind sprints, the Penta-Ocean Pirates aren't exactly a picture of power and might. But beneath their bruises and unsightly scars beat the hearts of some of Japan's most dedicated athletes. For this ragtag collection of defensive backs, wide receivers and linebackers are just some of the thousands of men, and a handful of women, who embody Japan's X League and who are perhaps the sport's most devoted players.

"They're not playing for money and they're not playing for scholarships. They're playing simply because they love football," explains Daniel Lynds, an American who has coached in the league for the past seven years. "These guys are really, really playing their hearts out."

Founded nearly 20 years ago, the X League — formerly known as the Japan American Football League — is a coalition of 75 teams fielding some 5,400 amateur athletes. The corporate-sponsored league includes teams paid for and staffed by IBM, Fujitsu, Nissan and Asahi Soft Drinks. It also incorporates two full-contact women's teams, named Wildcat and Lady Kong.

Each year the 18 teams in the elite X1 East, West and Central divisions battle it out for the Final 6 playoffs, with the top two meeting in the Tokyo Super Bowl and the winner of that game going up against the college champion in the ultimate clash, called-what else-the Rice Bowl.

Not brute force of U.S. version

Full-contact, full-throttle American football, with all the body blows and brute force that come with it, would seem an unlikely sport to take off in a country where the average man measures 168 cm and is brought up to be respectful, humble and above all, well-mannered. But football is also about tactics, teamwork and tackling obstacles — all things that translate easily into Japanese.

"When I started playing, I realized that most important aspects of the sport were strategy and a fighting spirit. These two elements really impressed me," says Tatsuya Tokai, former star quarterback for Kyoto University and Asahi Beer Silver Star, and the most celebrated player in the history of Japan.

Football touched down in Japan in 1934, when a group of American university professors led by Kentucky native Paul Rusch saw the game as a good way to entertain the growing number of Japanese-Americans studying here. But it was the Japanese who picked up the ball and ran with it, forming college teams throughout the Kanto and Kansai regions before companies like Iwatani International and Asahi Breweries pieced together teams in 1970. More companies followed suit through the next two decades, and the Japan American Football League was founded in 1985.

The bubble era saw some of Japan's biggest companies sink billions of yen into sending coaches to the U.S. to study, recruiting all-star college athletes with the promise of lifetime employment, and renting the most advanced training facilities in the country.

Membership in the X League still amounts to 50-120 million yen for stadium and training facility rental, in addition to equipment, refreshments and medical supplies. And although the sponsorship yen runs thin these days, the players who remain have managed to elevate the game to a heretofore unseen level.

In fact, today's players are getting bigger, they're getting better and they're working harder than ever. "When I first came, I'd look down rosters and see a 100-kilogram player and think that's a big player," says Lynds, 30, head coach of the Onward Skylarks. "Now on our team alone, we have 17 guys over 100kg. And you look at the height, and 180 cm used to be really tall. But now if you're not 180 cm, you're considered small."

Not only is the shape of the players changing, but so is that of the league itself. Competition is getting fiercer as the higher-ranked teams continue to invest in professional American coaches and preseason training camps. The plays are getting tougher and smarter as more and more athletes spend time overseas with NFL Europe or the U.S.'s Arena Football League. And the dynamics are shifting from a strong defensive game to a more balanced offensive-defensive one as everyone involved gets more exposure to the American game.

No inflated egos or hidden agenda

To Lynds, it all adds up to Japan having by far the highest level of amateur football in the world. To the fans, it adds up to some of the best opportunities to watch professional-quality football without the inflated egos, hidden agendas and all-out merchandising that mark the sport today.

On the one hand, X League matchups have all the hallmarks of a big-time football game. The stands hold upwards of 60,000, the sidelines buzz with players and trainers, and the cheerleaders provide the halftime show. On the other, everyone in the stands seems to know one another, the players bow to the fans at the end of every game, and all the cheerleaders are black-haired, not blonde.

Technically, the Japanese game is a hair shorter, with quarters lasting 12 minutes instead of the standard 15. It's also dominated by passing and the defensive line, the result of the small size of Japanese players and most coaches' tendencies to put their best players on defense and relegate the rest to offense. And perhaps more anything else, it's about the game plan.

"Japanese football is very sneaky," says one Pirates player. "Before a game we watch a lot of videos of the opposing team so we can find their weak point and attack it."

Up in the stands, Japanese football is more of a family affair. On any given Sunday during the regular season, a few hundred to some 15,000 fans dot the bleachers, most of whom are tied to the team by career or by blood. "The fans are really fun because most of them work for the companies that support the team. So they really live and die for their team," says Lynds.

They also seem to truly enjoy the sport, as well as the sight of their friends on the field. "I never saw 'The Wave,' but a lot of the audience at the Rice Bowl had watched NFL on TV or had some experience overseas. At the normal games, most people just yelled out their friends' names," recalls Yukiko Tokai of the time when her husband Tatsuya was quarterback for the Asahi Beer Silver Stars.

Peppered with Japanese pop culture

X League games are also peppered with their own brand of Japanese pop culture, with combined Japanese-English announcements, bouncy cheerleaders shouting out "Touch-down! Touch-down!" and an unusual choice of theme songs.

"For the longest time Fujitsu would play 'Popeye the Sailor Man' whenever they got a first down. And I'd be on the other sideline coaching against them so I hated to hear that," says Lynds, chuckling. "Yeah, get rid of Popeye."

It's been a winning formula so far, but the X League may be starting to shed its all-in-the-family image. Two years ago it decided to drop the ban on foreign-born players, a move the league said was designed to reflect the increasing internationalism of the sponsor companies. "It was hard to tell [the foreign employees] that they couldn't play," explains secretary-general Yasuhiro Fujii.

Not everyone agrees with the decision to throw open the doors to outsiders. "I don't think the league should be totally open to foreigners because they are far bigger, taller and tougher than the Japanese," says Tokai. "If they play against the smaller Japanese players, they could injure or possibly kill them."

With only two foreign players last year and about seven suiting up this season, the Japanese look likely to live out another season. Another factor favoring their survival could be that the Japanese are the ones staging the international assault.

In July 1999, the Japan national team triumphed in the first American Football World Cup in Palermo Italy, clobbering Australia 54-0 and Sweden 24-14 before dismissing Mexico 6-0 in the final. And each of the past several years, at least six or seven players have journeyed to NFL Europe, the six-team professional league stocked with American and other NFL hopefuls.

Not counting former yokozuna Wakanohana's invitation to join the Arena Football League's Arizona Rattlers training camp, a few Japanese players have even made it to the birthplace of the game itself. Last year Shinzo Yamada, a former linebacker for the Asahi Soft Drinks Challengers, played for the Memphis Maniax in the XFL — a hard-hitting pro football venture between NBC television and the World Wrestling Federation — in its one and only season. And two Japanese cheerleaders have even made the leap, packing their pompoms and going off to join the San Francisco 49ers' Gold Rush dance squad.

But the closest Japan has come to playing with the big boys was just last month when Masafumi Kawaguchi, a six-year veteran with the NFL Europe's Amsterdam Admirals, was invited to join the 49ers' training camp after their appearance in last month's American Bowl in Osaka. The 29-year-old linebacker was sent packing on August 25, but 49ers coach Steve Mariucci reportedly told the Associated Press, "I have no doubt that in the very near future there will be a Japanese player on an NFL team."

For the Pirates, whose most immediate goal is getting back into X1 after they were exiled to X2 for losing every game they played last season, the NFL is still a pipe dream. But one look in their black-and-blue eyes and you know they're not about to give up. "They're modern-day gladiators," says Lynds. "And these guys are doing it for free."

September 24, 2002

Bookmark to:

Login to post your opinion or register now for free.