The biggest crisis of young Junichi Inamoto's career was convincing his parents to allow him to quit high school and turn pro with his hometown Gamba Osaka.
Inamoto hardly looked like pro material when he entered the J-League club's youth system at 12. But his meteoric rise is symbolic of the rapid growth of Japanese soccer in the last decade.
"Inamoto was not impressive player at all," says Nobuyuki Uenoyama, his former coach, "maybe the worst player on our team."
The year was 1992, the eve of the launch of Japan's pro league, and Gamba was required to develop a youth team program.
Inamoto, now one of the key players on Japan's national team, made remarkable progress, jumping into Gamba's pro team in four years. He quit high school to train during the day and took correspondence courses to earn his high school diploma.
The 16-year-old Inamoto needed to enlist Uenoyama to convince his parents that he was making the right move.
"Please think of your son as a sumo wrestler," Uenoyama told Inamoto's parents.
Traditionally, only young sumo wrestlers were allowed to forgo high school. Quitting high school was not what 16-year-old Japanese students did.
But Inamoto, a defensive midfielder, quickly made his mark. In 1997, he became the youngest player, at 17 years, 6 months, to debut in the J-League. A J-League rookie's salary in 1997 was limited to $38,000 until he'd played 450 minutes. Inamoto quickly cleared that mark and earned $80,000 in his first season.
Like other J-League teams, Gamba budgets $1 million a year for its youth program. It has 150 youngsters ages 4-18 and a staff of six full-time coaches.
Gamba Osaka's investment paid off when it sold Inamoto to English club Arsenal last fall for $4.5 million.
Inamoto, the first Japanese to play in the European Champions League, is a shining example of the new breed of Japanese player, one developed in the J-League system and not at the high school level.
SOCCER KINGDOM. Shizuoka is one of Japan's most beautiful prefectures. Located 115 miles west of Tokyo, it's the home of Mount Fuji and shining Pacific coastline.
It's also known as the "Soccer Kingdom" and "Brazil in Japan."
Half the 22 players on Japan's World Cup team at France '98 hailed from Shizuoka. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who immigrated to Brazil in the first half of the 20th century were natives of the coastal prefecture.
Shizuoka is home to two thriving J-League clubs: Shimizu S-Pulse ("S-Pulse" for the pulse of Japanese soccer) and two-time champion Jubilo Iwata.
Shimizu, one of 10 Japanese venues at the 2002 World Cup, has a population of only 240,000, but 30,000 players, some as young as 3 years old, are enrolled in soccer clubs.
Soccer in Shimizu dates to the 1950s when Tetuji Hotta introduced the sport in his elementary school. Later, the young teacher set out to organize soccer teams for elite boys and develop a coaching program.
In early 1970s, Pepsi rewarded Hotta's quiet enthusiasm. The American beverage maker planned to expand in the Asian market and sponsored Pele, who has just retired. Pepsi promised Shimizu $70,000 per year for 10 years. Hotta used the funding to establish three projects: a local elementary school tournament, an expanded coaching program and a local soccer newspaper.
Shizuoka high schools have dominated the high school soccer tournament, which takes place every New Year's season and brings together teams from the 47 prefectures. Interest in the tournament is high. Almost every game is shown on national television. At its peak in late 1980s, the final drew capacity crowds of 55,000 fans at Tokyo National Stadium.
Soccer is extremely competitive in Shizuoka. Its high school system is responsible for fostering the careers of many pro players. The most famous product is Shinji Ono, who began playing at 10. At 18 he was part of Japan's 1998 World Cup squad; he, along with Inamoto, is pivotal to Japan's 2002 World Cup hopes. Ono moved to Dutch club Feyenoord from Urawa Red Diamonds and is having the best season among the Japanese national team stars based in Europe.
THIRD PRO SPORT. The J-League was established with 10 teams in order to revitalize soccer in Japan and raise the level of the national team so it could regularly qualify for the World Cup.
The initial popularity of the J-League exceeded all expectations.
National Stadium was packed with a sellout crowd of 59,626 on May 15, 1993, for the opening game of the J-League. The match between Verdy Kawasaki and Yokohama Marinos drew a television rating of 34.5.
The J-League's launch, which came three years before Japan was chosen as co-host of the 2002 World Cup, was welcomed by not only male fans, but also women and children who wanted a taste of international sports. Soccer was only the third professional sport to be introduced in Japan, after baseball and sumo. Fans took to the songs, face-painting and colorful outfits.
Veteran stars such as Zico, Gary Lineker and Pierre Littbarski helped the J-League attract much international attention in its first year. Big-name players soon followed. Six Brazilians on the 1994 World Cup championship team went to Japan. There was an inevitable rise in player salaries. Verdy Kawasaki's annual budget was reported to exceed $50 million in the mid-'90s.
The J-League boom didn't last. The league expanded to 18 clubs, but attendance did not keep pace. Average attendance fell from a high of 19,592 in 1994 to 10,131 in 1997.
The J-League, conceived at the height of the Japanese economic boom, was hurt when the "bubble economy" burst. At the end of the 1998 season, Yokohama Flugels, one of the 10 original J-League teams, merged with local rival Yokohama Marinos. The economic crisis forced Flugels co-owner Sato Kogyo, a local construction company, to withdraw its support. Japanese airline ANA, the club's other owner, couldn't afford to support Flugels alone.
REMARKABLE RESILIENCY. In 1999, a two-division system started. There are 16 teams in J1 and 12 in J2. The bottom two J1 teams and top two J2 teams automatically trade places every season. The relegation battle has generated big interest among fans.
In 2001, average attendance climbed 50 percent, rising from 11,065 the previous season to 16,548. The opening of World Cup stadiums is largely responsible for the big increase. The J-League has shown remarkable resiliency, growing while Japan is in the midst of its third recession in a decade with no end in sight.
League clubs have scaled back operations – all the big-name foreigners have left – and 10 were reported to have turned a profit.
Soccer still lags far behind baseball in terms of popularity.
The J-League began its 10th season in March, but that pales next to baseball's 70-year history.
Average attendance at Japanese baseball games dropped 3.7 percent in 2001 – the departure of Japanese stars to Major League Baseball is viewed as a serious threat to Japanese baseball's future – but baseball still drew an average of 30,475 fans, almost double that of the J-League.
Jubilo Iwata striker Masashi Nakayama, the J-League's all-time leading scorer with 126 goals, earns $650,000 a year, a fraction of the $5 million salary of Yomiuri Giants outfielder Hideki Matui, Japanese baseball's highest-paid player.
PANIC BUYING. More than 100 reporters flew to the southern island of Kyushu, a three-hour flight from Tokyo, to cover the Japanese national team's training camp in January even though their only access to players was at a one-hour press conference at the end of the camp.
Kozo Kinomoto, the national team general manager, had to rent a banquet hall for the perfunctory "friendship reception" with the media. Until a few years ago, the meeting was held in an izakaya, a small Japanese pub.
Japanese papers have caught World Cup fever. There are six morning sports papers and two evening sports papers. These colorful papers, sold mostly at train station kiosks, have at least four pages about soccer, including extensive reports on the Japanese abroad, such as Inamoto, Ono and Hidetoshi Nakata, based in Italy. Nikkan Sports, the leading sports daily, plans to devote 15-20 pages each day during the World Cup; it has doubled its soccer staff to 15 reporters.
"The biggest advantage for soccer," veteran Tokyo sports reporter Kentaro Miura says, "is that soccer has its own national team."
International competition is the first chance since World War II for ordinary Japanese to cheer for their country and sing the national anthem without hesitation.
The origins of the love affair Japanese fans have with the national team dates to October 1993. Japan was seconds from qualifying for the 1994 World Cup, but it conceded a goal in stoppage time and tied Iraq, 2-2, in Doha, Qatar, allowing archrival South Korea to take the second Asian berth at USA '94.
The exciting run in World Cup qualifying, which ended with what's known as the "Tragedy in Doha," captivated Japanese fans and helped popularize the national team.
TV ratings for national team games are high. Japan's match against Croatia in the first round of the 1998 World Cup was viewed by 72 million, more than half of the nation's 127 million population. Japan's friendly with Italy drew a rating of 34.8, remarkable for a Wednesday night, because many Japanese get home from work late in the evening.
The World Cup has Japanese fans in a panic. Some skipped work last fall to try to secure tickets when they went on sale. Many were disappointed when the phone lines to JAWOC, the Japanese organizing committee, were busy for all eight hours.
The ratio of tickets available to ticket requests for Japanese matches was 37-1. Prestige tickets for the semifinal in Saitama are going for more than $4,000 in web auctions.
That figure should go much higher.
by Soccer America Editorial Intern Hijiri Kono
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