Origins

The first rugby games in Japan were played by clubs founded by foreign residents in the treaty ports of Yokohama and Kobe, which were opened in the 1860s. The Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club (founded 1870) and the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club (founded as the Yokohama Cricket Club in 1868) were the social centres where Rugby teams were formed. It was in 1901 that the first rugby game between the Y.C.& A.C. and Japanese students at Keio University took place. The first annual “Interport” fixture between the Kobe and Yokohama clubs also dates from 1901, and it is still keenly contested today.

The first Japanese to experience and play in a rugby game is believed to be Baron Dairoku Kikuchi who was educated at University College School in London and “played football for the school against the 3rd XV” in 1872. Kikuchi was not a great sportsman, but he was a brilliant mathematical student who later studied at Cambridge University and became a Minister of Education.

The Cambridge connection was maintained when two Cambridge graduates, Edward Bramwell Clarke and Ginnosuke Tanaka introduced the game of Rugby to students at Keio University. The Englishman Clarke was born a baker’s son in 1875 at Yokohama, and graduated in law and literature from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 1899. That year he returned to Japan to become a language instructor at Keio, later becoming a distinguished professor of English at Kyoto Imperial University. He died in 1934 aged 61. Ginnosuke Tanaka (1874-1935) was sent to study at the Leys School in Cambridge and in 1896 he too entered Cambridge University.

It was Clarke who asked Tanaka to persuade Keio to adopt rugby. According to the standard history:
“Under the leadership of these two men, a group of ten students joined the club
and rugby began to blossom at Keio. On 7 December 1901 the members of the Keio
Rugby Club, selected by Tanaka and Clarke, took part in the first rugby game with
foreigners at Yokohama. The game took place in Yokohama Park and the final score was Yokohama foreigners – 35, Keio – 5. Clarke was at full-back and Tanaka stand-off.” (Nihon Ragubi Shi by S. Kayama)

E.B. Clarke later wrote that he had introduced rugby to his students because they “…loitered around wasting the hours and the lovely autumn weather.” He strongly advocated the introduction of organised western-style team sports into the Japanese school curriculum.

Other schools, spearheaded by the most innovative private universities, soon followed Keio’s lead: Doshisha in 1911, Waseda in 1918, Kansai in 1919, Kanto ARC in 1920, Kansai Gakuin and Tokyo Imperial in 1921, Kyoto Imperial in 1923, and Meiji and Rikkyo in 1924. Rugby was very popular and matches involving Waseda, Meiji and Keio attracted huge crowds in excess of 20,000.

The Kanto (East Japan) rugby association was established in 1924, and the Seibu (Western) rugby association a year later. The Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU) dates from November 30, 1926 and an all-Kyushu team was also founded that year, though it was not until after the Second World War that the Kyushu association gained independence from the Western association.

Rugby soon filtered down from the private universities to prestigious high schools. In 1904-05 a Welsh visitor, Lord Davies of Llandinam, witnessed rugby at the Peers School (Gakushuin) on the invitation of Baron Kikuchi who was then the school’s president. Davies noted in his diary:
“Mr. Tanaka, an old Leys and Cambridge man, comes to give the boys a lesson
in Rugby, and they play well for beginners. They have plenty of dash, but not
enough weight. The ground is very hard.”

Despite any physical disadvantages, the mastery of western sports was seen by Japanese educators as an important step in gaining international prestige. Rugby was in those days the game of the English gentleman, and was played for its character-building virtues. The Prince of Wales attended a KRAC versus Sanko (Third High School) game in 1922, and in November 1923 Prince Chichibu, the second son of the Taisho Emperor, became connected with rugby when he saw a game for the first time at the Far Eastern Olympics (now called the Asian Games) between Keio and Waseda universities. There he also met Shigeru Kayama for the first time.

Kayama and Prince Chichibu

Shigeru Kayama was the coach of Tokyo University’s rugby team in the 1920s, and in 1927 he became president of the JRFU after going on a year’s course to London where he played for Harlequins and Richmond, and studied how the game was administrated.

Kayama met Prince Chichibu again in London on October 31, 1925 and the ‘sporting prince’, then studying at Oxford, asked to be taken to a rugby match. They consulted the newspaper and found that Cambridge University was playing London Scottish at Richmond that day, so they went to see that match, and many more thereafter. By the time the Prince returned to Japan he had become a passionate fan of the game: he became the JRFU’s first royal patron, and the Tokyo headquarters of Japanese rugby is named Chichibunomiya after him. Prince Chichibu continued as the first president of the JRFU until his death in 1953. His statue is to be found at the stadium, which was completed shortly after his death.

1920-1945

The first overseas tour by a Japanese team was Keio University to Shanghai in 1925. Waseda toured Australia, Doshisha toured Manchuria and Meiji went to Shanghai in 1927. That year was also the first year in which Waseda defeated Keio 8-6, on the fifth attempt. All-Japan visited Canada in 1930, and return visits were arranged by the Canadians in 1932, 1933 and 1934. Australia came in 1934 and New Zealand schoolboys in 1936. Japan also exported rugby in the 1930s, to Korea and Manchuria. But as World War Two approached, many western sports (e.g. tennis and golf) were discouraged in schools as ‘un-Japanese’. While rugby was still considered an acceptable manly sport, its name was briefly changed to ‘tokyu’ (fighting ball), though it is still called ‘ragubi-’ today. The last rugby games played during the war were apparently in 1943.

1945-1953

The first post-war rugby game was played between Kansai and Sanko on September 23, 1945. Keio’s first game was on January 1, 1946 against Kyoto University. Companies began to support rugby and the game began to spread beyond its traditional university base.

In September 1952 Oxford University toured Japan after an invitation sent to Oxford and Cambridge by the JRFU in 1951. The Japanese ‘never stopped trying whatever the score’, and the British students were amazed to play in front of crowds of up to 30,000! With the support of Prince Chichibu, and the great interest of the media and public, Japanese rugby was back in business. Cambridge toured in 1953 and the Cambridge captain Ian Beer remarked that the Japanese
“…sportsmanship and manners were of the highest level expected of rugby players. Fitness of their players was excellent, and every one of them was so keen to learn that I felt very sorry we could only spend one morning coaching in Tokyo.”

1954-1999

Japan soon became a popular destination for foreign teams, and tours included games against the national side, the major universities and the representative regions of Kyushu, Kansai and Kanto.

During the RFU’s centenary year in 1971 England toured the Far East. By accepting an invitation to play Japan at Tokyo, England showed its recognition of Japanese rugby. Japan pushed their mighty opponents all the way, and in the end England was relieved to scrape home by the narrowest of margins, 6-3.

In 1973 Japan visited England, Wales and France, and since then has played the UK unions on a periodic basis, both at home and away. The greatest triumph so far came in 1989 when a lively Japan coached by Hiroaki Shukuzawa narrowly defeated a Scotland touring team 28-24 on a hot day in May at Chichibunomiya. It was essentially the same team which recorded Japan’s World Cup win against Zimbabwe at Belfast in 1991. Results in the World Cups in 1995 and 1999, however, were disappointing.

The Top League (2003)

The proximity of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Island nations (Samoa, Fiji and Tonga) has had a hugely beneficial effect on Japanese rugby standards since the 1970s, and all of the top company teams have at least one or two foreign players, and sometimes coaches and player-coaches. This boosts the performance of the Top League teams dramatically.
The Top League kicked off in September 2003 as a replacement for the traditional company championship, with 12 corporate-sponsored teams playing in a league format. The top eight at the end of the season move on to play in a knockout tournament for the Microsoft Cup, while the 11th and 12th teams are automatically relegated and the 9th and 10th teams play off against the top teams from the East Japan, Kansai and Kyushu leagues.

The JRFU has set up the new semi-professional nationwide league with the aims of consolidating rugby’s position as the third most popular team sport in Japan after baseball and soccer, and improving the level of the national team. For the 2004-5 season the Top League clubs are: Kintetsu Liners, Kobe Kobelco Steelers, Kubota Spears, NEC Green Rockets, Nihon IBM Big Blue, Ricoh Black Rams, Sanyo Wild Knights, Suntory Sungoliath, Toshiba Brave Lupus, Toyota Verblitz, World Fighting Bulls, Yamaha Jubilo.

Japanese rugby is still developing its own dynamic and exciting style, which so delighted the spectators at the RWC2003 in Australia. The future of Japanese rugby is bright, and it rests on a splendid and glorious past.