10 Nov 2009(Tue)

Ten years ago last week – as a sixth-form student about to face university admission interviews – my first-hand experience of Japan began with seven days spent in Tokyo. Blown away as I was, though, with the lights of Shinjuku, the gadgets of Akihabara, and the cultural awakenings of the Sensō-ji temple in Asakusa, this was of course just the tip of the iceberg. While many Westerners only ever sample the capital, any enthusiast will at least want to visit Kyoto as well and sample delights such as Kiyomizu-dera and Kinkaku-ji before claiming to have ‘seen’ Japan. Ideally, he will travel between the two cities by bullet train too, taking a north-facing window seat (numbers ending in ‘E’, not ‘A’) to gaze at Mount Fuji on the way past, and have timed the trip to coincide with the blooming of the cherry blossoms (latest updates available on any good weather forecast) and thus ensure that his photographs match the postcards he sends home.

 

For the quirkier completist, however, no spotter’s guide to Japan would be complete without the sighting of a line of besuited gentlemen, bowed down at 45 degrees in apology for some recent scandal or misdemeanour. Admittedly few will ever travel to a football match for the purposes of checking this particular box, but those who had were in for a treat at Todoroki on Sunday as the players of Kawasaki Frontale – dressed in matching grey suits, and led by the similarly-attired manager Takashi Sekizuka and club chairman Shinpei Takeda – embarked on a lap of the pitch and offered similar gestures of regret to each of the stadium’s four stands.

 

Frontale were, of course, in the proverbial doghouse for the manner in which some of their players had reacted to defeat in the Nabisco Cup final against FC Tokyo last Tuesday – the fifth time this as yet trophyless club has finished as runners-up in a major competition. So disgusted was JFA president Motoaki Inukai after the game that he told reporters he wished he ‘hadn’t been there to see such a disgrace for the whole of football’, and spat out his hope that the prize money of 50 million yen (about £330,000 – count ‘em) be returned. In Kawasaki, Takeda voluntarily complied with this request days later, and forced his entire playing staff to write letters of apology to those they had offended. Their crimes – and those of a sensitive disposition should look away now – were to have greeted this latest heartbreak with frowns rather than smiles, for the midfielder Yusuke Mori (who has been individually suspended) to have chewed gum on his way past the royal box, and, in scenes never before witnessed on a football field, for two or three players to have removed their silver medals shortly after receiving them.

 

One can only wonder what effect having their bottoms spanked so publicly had on the players’ mentality. After all the bowing was over and the suits had been swapped for more conventional kit, Kawasaki struggled to break down a JEF United Chiba side headed for near-certain relegation with the third most porous defence in the league; a stark contrast to their previous league outing against title outsiders Sanfrecce Hiroshima, in which they scored seven without reply. One point ahead of Kashima Antlers as the J1 title race enters its nervy final month, a Frontale fan might have taken the reaction at the National Stadium as a positive sign that the players hate defeat, and would therefore be doubly determined to avoid another failure in the league. Instead, they had the fact that JEF United absolutely needed a win themselves to thank for the spaces that opened up at the back and allowed Renatinho to clinch a 3-2 victory for the home side in second half stoppage time.

 

While the JFA’s determination for professional footballers to show a good example to children should be praised – alas, this an area in which we may have become a little blasé in Europe – it is hard to avoid the suspicion that their energies would be better directed towards matters more pressing and, you know, 21st century. For all their successes in developing Japanese football over the past two decades, perhaps the JFA could do with a bit of modernisation just as much as most other large organisations here. Perhaps Mori and company just happened to catch Inukai on a bad day. Or perhaps the former Urawa Reds chairman simply recalled being caught masticating in the royal box himself, back when some of his players shunned medals following their own defeat to FC Tokyo in the Nabisco Cup final of 2004. Now that, Mr. Inukai, is a spotter’s badge.