SNA (Tokyo) — First off, bravo the Japan team for its upset victory over Germany in their first match of the 2022 World Cup!

It was a game where the Samurai Blue showed world-class skill against a lackluster team, and didn’t let the nerves of playing a former world champion get the better of them. Of course, they did lose their next game against Costa Rica, but their achievement against Germany stands.

I want to devote this column to why it’s difficult for me to root for Japan teams in general. It’s not an issue of nationality (since I have that). It’s a matter of how Japan as a society approaches international sports; we take all the fun out of it.

Wherever I’ve communally watched sports in Japan, be it at a stadium, a bar, or at home with friends and family, sooner or later people start making “those comments”: things like, “gosh, black people are fast!” or “we lost because Japanese legs are too short” or “you can’t trust competitions involving Chinese and Koreans because they cheat” or “he can’t represent Japan because he’s not pure Japanese,” etc.

This sort of language is normalized enough to usually go unchallenged. A lot of this is due to Japan’s attitude towards fair play—i.e. fair play is fine as long as Japanese win.

“Fairness” as a cultural meme is surprisingly undervalued in Japan, especially in a society this incorrigibly hierarchical. As I’ve written extensively elsewhere, whenever Japan is in charge of an event (be it the Ekiden running races, sumo, or events open to international participants or audiences, including even foreign language contests), Japan tends to tip the playing field so that it favors the “home team.”

Foreigners face barriers both explicit and subtle, expressly justified for the sake of keeping things “interesting” for the home audience–you can’t have foreigners beating us at our own game on our home turf.

But given Japan’s racialized way of defining “foreigner,” this generally applies to anyone who has no business representing Japan or even playing a “Japanese sport” well in the first place.

It can mean those imported from overseas to temporarily beef up Japan’s teams, of course, but it also means those Japan-born and Japan-raised interlopers, including the Zainichi, who get reclassified as “foreign” and face restrictions when they try to play in domestic sports leagues. Particularly in events that might feed into the Olympics, you can’t devote national resources to “foreigners” and have them take slots away from Japanese.

The most egregious example is sumo, where even people who have taken Japanese citizenship are still classified as “foreign wrestlers” and face quotas and barriers.

Of course, if those “foreigners” actually produce victories for Japan, especially in international meets, they are celebrated. If not, they’re singled out, blamed, and removed from the team, as happened in Japan’s rugby league. It’s quite a tightrope act for any “foreigner” to be a long-seller in Japan’s sports, and it’s one reason I sour on cheering on Japan.

Another reason is that Japan’s sports media, particularly the daily newspapers and the aggressive TV network pundits, put enormous pressure on our athletes.

The spotlight is positively searing on athletes representing Japan in sports abroad. They aren’t expected to merely do their personal best. They’re expected not to shame Japan by losing to anyone else–especially in sports that Japan created (i.e. judo or karate) or has a strong record of performance in (such as gymnastics or figure skating). Any mistake gets highlighted in great detail in Japan’s dailies, and if the athlete doesn’t choke under the glare of the national gaze, they may wind up hurting themselves in the long term, as substantiated elsewhere, with shortened lives from the stress.

So when Japan does well at an international event, I cheer. Then I immediately wince at the thought of just how much pressure they must have gone through to get to this stage. Then I shake my head at how short-lived their victory is.

A day or so later you’ll hear interviewers ask: “You won. Great. What’s next?” They’re now expected to keep up this level of effort until another Japan-worthy successor becomes heir-apparent.

Finally, I especially dislike how Japan’s press, particularly its social media, distorts a victory (or defeat) into an issue of either racial superiority or victimhood.

You’ll see it in the buildup, and post victory, in the dailies: Japan’s athletes will win or are winning because they are imbued with yamato damashi (Spirit of the Japanese Race). It’s the same deadly historical vestige that powered wartime suicide missions. Or it’s because Japanese have unique cultural characteristics such as gaman (perseverance), or preternatural ganbatte and doryoku–must-win attitudes towards training. Or perhaps it was our four distinct seasons that forged their character, or even our nutritious Japanese food.

When Japan loses, the narrative often revolves around Japan being somehow victimized by unfair disadvantages. This might be physical attributes (“foreigners are so much taller and stronger than us Japanese”), insufficient training once they got there, problems with overseas climate or time zones that must have put them off their game, and even the lack of proper Japanese food.

Even last week’s impressive World Cup victory over Germany included something to feel victimized about. In their pre-game group photos, Germany’s team covered their mouths to protest having their speech censored by FIFA, which threatened them all with yellow cards if they wore the Royal Dutch Football Association’s “OneLove” rainbow armbands in support of the LGBT+ community. Homosexuality is illegal in host Qatar, and its human rights record has come under international scrutiny.

Rather than lend support to this worthy cause (as the captains of seven European teams, governmental officials, reporters and spectators have), the regular suspects within Japan’s online community claimed the German team was covering their mouths as an intentional slight against Japanese still wearing Covid masks.

Now that’s creative.

I’m surprised they haven’t yet blamed Qatari food for something.

Anyway, I did wish Japan luck in the 2022 World Cup. I’m in favor of anything getting people away from their video game consoles to get some exercise and learn the spirit of fair play. I hope that future victories propel soccer into a sport as popular in Japan as, say, baseball (without the military overtones), sumo (without the overt racism), and tennis and golf (without the elitism).

But I can only root for Japan’s teams in the instant of victory; not before, and not for long afterwards. At those points, in seeps the racialized politics, sucking all the fun out of it.

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