The Art of Japanese Rugby – Part 1
by Ben Darwin | 18 February 2009 (12:29)
Greetings from Tokyo – or “konnichiwa” as most of the other 28 million people living in this city would say.
Although I have been here since June last year coaching a team out of Tokyo called The Shining Arcs, understanding Japanese rugby requires patience and an open mind due to the expected cultural and language gaps, but also on-field and game differences, which I will be discussing over the following weeks.
To begin with, I want to familiarize you all with the configuration of the Japanese competition - one of the most difficult things to get your head around.
High School rugby sits at the bottom, but still remains well resourced due to it being high school based with good crowd numbers that are improving all the time.
Above this hundreds of universities lead by 4 or 5 larger teams, dominating the national scene. People’s notions of the university rugby team here in Japan changed dramatically during a recent game, when Teikyo University drew with second division and Top League bound team Ricoh; the University’s forward pack is reportedly bigger.
Next is professional rugby, in which teams are primarily company based. Companies don’t just sponsor a team but ARE the team. The Shining Arcs belongs to Japanese communications giant NTT, whose every player, as is with most company teams, not only performs on the field, but also in the office in a 9 to 5 capacity on top of training and game commitments. While this does include the odd club team representing a city, these teams battle to keep up to form without the many resources a company team is privy to.
These teams are generally patronized by the CEOs, who would have played rugby at university level – the scene of which is massive, often drawing greater crowds than the professional leagues in Japan - and have now found themselves in a position where they can still fuel their passion. Such teams are a source of pride for the businesses, also bringing to the table another way in which rival companies can compete against each other for such as Toyota and Honda. The way a player conducts themselves on the field can therefore have serious repercussions in their 9 to 5 job role also. And teams can be strongly affected by the bottom lines of their parent companies too, with the effects of the global economic crisis already starting to filter through to local teams sitting in the technology and auto industries.
Professional rugby is split up into the following divisions.
Top league consists of 14 teams from all over Japan, competing in a round robin tournament.
Below that there are three 2nd divisions who compete in the same format, with a 3rd division underneath that and so on. Promotion and relegation between divisions is a complicated process involving a series of playoff games to decide a final playoff game against a top league side. It is far more complicated than it sounds.
On top of these divisional tournaments are the Microsoft Cup, in which the best 4 top league teams play one another, and the Japan Cup which is battled out by the best 6 top league teams as well as university and promotion bound teams.
Although a predominately a foreigners’ game, the Japanese have embraced rugby whole-heartedly and are making serious inroads into world-class competition. This makes for a very unique and wonderful coaching/playing environment, of which will be shared with you over the coming weeks.
