Spring, 1993, and almost 60,000 people packed themselves into Tokyo’s National Stadium to witness the dawn of a new age. Naturally for such an historic evening in football, it featured Pele, Everton, a future Oxford United manager and Kazuyoshi ‘King Kazu’ Miura.
A year after Japan’s new J.League was founded, the wait was over. The first official match had arrived, to be played between Verdy Kawasaki and Yokohama Marinos: the country’s top two teams, who were known just 12 months previously as the rather less alluring Yomiuri FC and Nissan Motors.
Things had changed. Now, a sell-out crowd saw the pre-match light show and firework display; the rock band with electric guitars that doubled as lasers; the inflatable mascot with a giant football for a head. A year after the Premier League began, but three years before the USA launched MLS, football in Japan kicked off its own era of razzmatazz.
Back then, Japan’s ambition rather outstripped its footballing heritage.
The Far East nation was already preparing a bid to host the men’s 2002 World Cup, despite the Blue Samurai having never previously qualified for the tournament. In a country where baseball, martial arts and sumo wrestling enjoyed sporting supremacy with the populace, Japan’s football team didn’t win a single World Cup qualifying match until 1974 – they withdrew from invitations in the 1930s, were suspended by FIFA after the Second World War, then
