19 Aug 2010(Thu)

One of the chief purposes behind the establishment of Football Japan in spring 2008 was for it to serve as a vehicle for the Japan Soccer Archive – a JFA-endorsed, official historical record of Japanese football for which I have had the great privilege of assisting the legendary sportswriter Hiroshi Kagawa in compiling. Though still very much a work in progress, the archive presents a detailed year-by-time timeline of the development of the global game in this country since 1912 – placed in context alongside events elsewhere in the world – and profiles the luminaries whose contributions and achievements have been deemed significant enough for a place in the Japan Football Hall of Fame.

 

This Tuesday, the Japan Football Association announced that Kagawa himself had been specially selected to join this Hall of Fame as part of its seventh annual group of inductees, in recognition of his 60-year career as Japan’s most respected football journalist.

 

Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1924, Kagawa played football throughout his formative years at school and university, before appearing in two Emperor’s Cup finals with Osaka Club in the early 1950s. By this point, his attention was already turning to the written word as a medium to convey his passion for the sport, joining the Sankei Shimbun newspaper in 1952 before ultimately becoming editor of the Osaka-based Sankei Sports in 1974 until his official retirement ten years later. Reaching the age of 60 was no deterrent, however, for Kagawa has since remained equally active as a freelance writer, contributing to a number of different publications such as Soccer Magazine and Football Japan (of whose parent company, SIX Inc., he is chairman). Even at 85, Kagawa’s love both for football and for his work remains as deep as ever, and as he told me before this summer’s tournament in South Africa, his frustration at the hip trouble that forced him to miss a World Cup for the first time since 1970 has only strengthened his resolve to charter his own plane to Brazil in 2014.

 

Aside from writing, Kagawa’s illustrious career has also seen him involved in the organization of the Osaka rounds of the football competition at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, the foundation of Kobe Football Club in 1970, and the development of the Kansai Football Association as a long-standing member of the board. His nomination to the Japan Football Hall of Fame follows a similar honour bestowed posthumously on his older brother Taro, a former Japan international, in 2006.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my heartfelt congratulations to Kagawa-san for this enormously well-deserved recognition. It has been a great pleasure and real honour to get to know him in both professional and personal capacities over the past two and a half years, and I have always found him to be a man of great warmth, integrity, and humility who commands the utmost respect from all around him. I look forward to working alongside Kagawa-san for a long time to come, and in particular to the feature that he will now have to write about himself for the Japan Soccer Archive!

 

Many, many congratulations, Kagawa-san.

 

 

 

Related links:

Japan Football Hall of Fame – Japanese only

Japan Soccer Archive – English-language version; work in progress

Kagawa Hiroshi no hengensekku – Kagawa’s column at Football Japan (Japanese only)

Guardian article on Kagawa’s pre-World Cup thoughts