Soccer Changes When Society Changes

Tokyo, Japan

By Yas Mamemachi

Hirose at a seminar in Tokyo (Photo by Yas Mamemachi)

t has been a little more than 20 years since the movie “Cry Freedom” was released in 1987. The 157-minute film is based on a true story that took place duriing the apartheid era of South Africa. It features Steve Biko, the charismatic South African Black Consciousness Movement leader, played by Denzel Washington, and Donald Woods, a liberal white newspaper editor, played by Kevin Kline.

During that time, it was prohibited for more than three black South Africans to gather at any one place except for soccer stadiums where they were allowed to watch games. Biko used these opportunities for banned black South African rallies.

“The (soccer) World Cup will be held in South Africa next year. Hearing South Africa and soccer, I remembered the rally at a stadium in ‘Cry Freedom,’” says Ichiro Hirose, President of Sports Research Institute. He also teaches sports management at several Japanese universities.

Hirose had gotten involved in management of almost all the international soccer events held in Japan since the early 1980s. It should be said that he knows more about soccer and its related business behind the scenes than anybody else in Japan.

He says that many stories in soccer have often become mirror images of changes in society, pointing out the America –led new trend of soccer first.

Many Japanese still have an image of soccer, particularly in Europe, as a typical working class sport with hooligans-led vandalism. However, the reality has already changed since 1994 when the World Cup was held in Los Angeles, USA, according to Hirose.

“The World Cup USA successfully changed soccer into one of the greatest and global sports businesses with entertainment attractions, such as rock music and shows, for all family members and strong safety consideration as well as tax imposition on FIFA, or the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the organizer of the soccer World Cup. It was the first time in World Cup history.”

The new soccer as a sports business has progressed with the dramatic development of the so-called globalization in business and economy, led by the United States, Hirose adds.

And, “Such a trend was confirmed by the 2002 World Cup, which was held in Korea and Japan,” he continues.

In November 1995, the World Cup inspection team visited Japan to see if the local conditions were suitable for managing the event, since the place for the 2002 event was chosen in 1996.

The inspection team knew that soccer had not been popular in Japan and that Japan’s professional soccer league, J-League, only started in 1993. Obviously, they would be wondering if one of the largest sports events in the world could be held in Japan, while expecting a newly emerging area for the sport.

The inspection team arranged to watch one of the evening games in Kashima located at the edge of the greater Tokyo area. What they saw was a full stadium with excited but controlled cheers by local supporters, including women and children.

That impressed the inspection team members from the standpoint of soccer as a “healthy” sports business and safety concerns, confirming their way of promoting soccer after the 1994 World Cup.

Hirose recalls that this was part of the scenario by Japan’s bid committee for the 2002 World Cup. The members of the committee, including Hirose, studied a list of requirements for holding the World Cup and realized that the requirements for the 1998 event were different from the ones for 2002.

The place for the 1998 event was chosen in 1992 and the one for the 2002 event in 1996. It was no doubt that such differences were made by the 1994 World Cup. Hirose believed that Japan could have the odds in the inspection team’s favor if they studied the new trend of soccer started in 1994 carefully. And, they did.

A question remains. How do die-hard soccer fans in Europe feel about the changes?

“I think many of them welcome the “new” soccer, since they felt sick and tired of hooligan-led vandalism, such as breaking windows of shops and burning the floors of passenger coaches, and their vomit remained at many train stations after weekend matches,” says Hirose.“

Soccer a must, not baseball

Hirose also says that the professional soccer league started in Japan in 1993 was related to the country’s social movement, which was striving for changes in society.

In 1993 the Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated politics in Japan since World War II, was taken over by the Japan New Party, a newly developed party, then, with a policy of decentralization. The party was defunct a couple years later, though.

Decentralization of power from Tokyo to local governments corresponded with the new soccer league’s policy, which is that each team of the league should be locally managed and developed.

For years a professional baseball league, led by the nationally popular team in Tokyo, had been dominating Japanese professional sports. The locally oriented professional soccer league made great changes in Japanese professional sports just as the new party did in politics in the same year, Hirose explains.

It has been 16 years since the Japanese professional soccer league started. Some teams are based in local cities located away from the country’s larger cities, such as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, and have faced serious financial problems in management. They cannot be run in such a way as the key management policy of the soccer league aims.

Asked if local soccer teams could not financially survive in a Japan dominated by Tokyo in politics and business, Hirose replies that we should not be pessimistic about what a couple of local teams with serious financial problems suggest.

“Some say, unlike the Unites States where each state government has its independently authorized power in many fields, or Europe where many countries were born with the united small city states, Japan with a history of the central government’s domination for years may not have pre-conditions for decentralization of authority. That’s why local teams have trouble in management.”

“To me, Japan is already diverse in culture, satisfying one of the most important pre-conditions for locally supporting teams organizing a national league. Talking about my hometown area, Shizuoka, three different dialects can be spoken with pride,” says Hirose. “The problem is few persons with high management skills take managing positions with local soccer teams because of lower salaries than the ones paid to them in the mainstream business world.”

How many young and talented managers may raise their hands for local soccer teams? That may be a big question to ask about Japanese professional soccer as well as Japanese society in the future.