It took Japan 20 years to go from suffering a humiliating 145-17 loss to the All Blacks to beating the Springboks at the 2015 World Cup.
But the more impressive story is how quickly and successfully a rugby empire is being built within Japan, making its professional competition, League One, the most attractive in the world.
Gregor Paul explains how it has been done through a unique business model, a strong domestic foundation long-established through the universities, the largesse of some of the world’s largest corporations, ingenuity and smart recruitment of New Zealand and other foreign talent.
Robbie Deans recalls when he first came to coach in Japan 10 years ago and saw his team lined up in the tunnel alongside their Suntory opponents.
He was taken aback at the difference in size and body tone between the two teams.
“Suntory were one of the first clubs to get a conditioner,” he says. “The first IP to come up to Japan were the conditioning coaches. And that’s where the change in the game started to come through. I looked at us and thought, ‘We look a little bit malnourished.’ That has developed enormously. It has evolved physically.”
It may have started with an influx of foreign fitness coaches but it didn’t end there.
For the past decade, rugby talent from New Zealand has been pouring into Japan – today, League One is not the best club competition in the world but it is the one the game’s best players all seem to want to experience.
And while it may not be able to boast the depth of quality in either the French Top 14, URC or even Super Rugby, there’s a sense from those who play and coach there that it is only a matter of time before it does.
“I am not sure if they are aware of it but they really are ahead of the game,” says Deans.
The list of players who now call Japan home is long and impressive. More than 30 per cent of the Springboks’ 2023 World Cup-winning squad are contracted to Japanese clubs.
Sam Cane and TJ Perenara have just signed three-year deals to play in Japan, and Ardie Savea and Beauden Barrett both played in League One this year.
Richie Mo’unga and Shannon Frizell helped Toshiba win the championship this year and the big names in Europe are increasingly looking at Japan as a first-choice destination.
Former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, who became Toyota Verblitz’s director of rugby in 2020 and is now sharing coaching duties with his former international colleague Ian Foster, says the player market now runs permanently hot.
“Every day you are getting lists of players coming across your desk. Every day. Hundreds of them wanting to come.
“It is a professional game and this is one of the markets. They are big squads. Some people get paid good money; some people get paid average money.
“If you can play a bit and come young with a good attitude, then there is plenty of opportunity to have a really great life.
“Everyone thinks it is an easy playing market. But it is not. They train hard and they are committed. The difference is the physicality isn’t any less, it’s just that you are getting hit by a bloke who is 105kg instead of 120kg.”
That different physical profile of the players is one of League One’s major selling points.
Rugby is facing all sorts of issues relating to the excessive size and power of the athletes, the intensity of the impacts and the collision-based nature of many of the games.
Some players are comfortable in high-attrition leagues but, increasingly, certainly for mature players, there is a desire to play more aerobic, high-skilled rugby that has less long-term impact on the body.
This was a critical reason why former All Black Aaron Smith chose Japan after last year’s World Cup.
“It’s only one flight, not two, from New Zealand and the wear and tear on my body after 13 or 14 years in New Zealand has added up,” he says.
“Going to play up North probably didn’t suit me and playing 25-30 games a year wasn’t for me.
“I had just heard so much about here and the type of rugby, that it is not as physically taxing [contact-wise].
“You come off games feeling all right but, in Super Rugby and test matches, it can be like a car crash. And I am a halfback.
“So it all adds up and I saw an opportunity to extend my career. The Japanese rugby game is 80 minutes of high pace and smart rugby. It is played in the mid-afternoon and it is a running game.
“It is a very positive form of rugby and it reminds me of the early days of Super Rugby. No one wants to kick penalties.
“There are some good teams in this comp and some good rugby players here.”
Clearly, this brand of faster, more open rugby, in which sharp skillsets and tactical nous can flourish, is tapping into a rich vein of nostalgia.
In essence, rugby is a contact sport, not a collision sport, and there is a growing body of players, coaches and fans who are desperate to try to wind back the clock and enjoy something that looks like the game they used to play.
Whether by design or good luck, Japan has tapped into this zeitgeist and is being rewarded for it.
“The nature of the pre-season is longer so there is a lot of training time, the weather is good, the surfaces are good and the referees let a little bit go,” says former All Blacks captain Todd Blackadder, who is now coaching Toshiba Brave Lupus.
“You still have different systems here. A lot of Super Rugby is based on an idea of seeing who can do the same thing better. But here there is a lot of variety. It is like old NPC before the analysis was done on teams all the time.”
The other significant attraction about League One is the length of the season – a hot topic in professional rugby circles as player burnout, injury and concussion issues are all growing concerns, partly linked to the inadequate post-season and pre-season windows in which to recuperate and regenerate.
New Zealand’s best players are comparatively well looked after, typically playing no more than 30 games a year split between Super Rugby and tests.
But while the playing demand is not excessive, it comes with a significant amount of time spent away from home and usually about a 10-week break between seasons.
In Japan, there is a long pre-season and players have a break of at least 12 weeks, which they can spend in New Zealand.
It was the family-friendly nature of the set-up, where most games are played mid-afternoon and players can be home the same night, that led Perenara to commit to a three-year contract with Black Rams Tokyo.
“The amount of time we get to spend at home with our families is a massive reason why we decided to come,” he says.
“The last four years [in New Zealand], the amount of time I have spent away from my daughter has been tough and it doesn’t get any easier.
“The appeal of being together as one unit for the majority of the year really stood out for us.
“Hopefully we are going to create a home for our family and an area that my kids will call home for a bit and, who knows, that three years could extend to a little bit longer.”
Perhaps, too, there is another underappreciated throwback that Japan offers the modern player: a less toxic relationship with fans and media.
The 2023 World Cup was the nadir for abusive social-media interactions; referees received death threats and any player who made a critical mistake or was perceived to have conducted themselves in a way that wasn’t universally liked would be bombarded with unwelcome feedback.
This need to denigrate and over-analyse players has become an issue in the established professional leagues but it is not something anyone needs to worry about in Japan.
Cane, as a former All Blacks captain who had a tough time persuading the nation he was the right man for that job, says the anonymity he enjoyed in Japan earlier this year when he was playing for Suntory was one of the main factors drawing him back for a longer stint.
“One of the things that appeals to me personally about playing in Japan is being out of the public eye and the fact that rugby is not in the paper, it doesn’t pop up on your phone or social media feed.
“No one around you knows who you are. I was in an apartment building for months this year [playing for Suntory] and I would walk past numerous people and they had no idea who I was or what I did.
“Or if they do know rugby, they don’t care. I am looking forward to playing without the public eye or hearing people’s opinions.
“The Japanese, how they support their teams are the true definition of supporters. They support their teams regardless of results. They show up every week and they stay around after games whether you have won or lost.”
For a long time, New Zealanders weren’t sure what to make of Japan’s rugby set-up. There were concerns that the club environments weren’t as professional as they should be and that some of the high-performance trimmings, such as physiotherapy, medical care, conditioning and nutrition, were at a lower level than in Super Rugby.
If those concerns were ever legitimate, they are not now. “It was higher than what I expected but my expectations were based off word of mouth from players,” says Cane on the quality of high-performances in League One.
“What they were saying was probably reflective of their time there. It has improved so much. Brodie Retallick had pretty good insight because he came after the 2019 World Cup for a couple of seasons and went back and has come back and he said the difference in those four years is huge.
“The level of footy is fast. You get told that but it is probably more physical than I expected. In terms of the environment, really professional.
“We have a good nutritionist, who is onsite and all our lunches are onsite and provided. More hands-on physios than we would have back in New Zealand – everything is there that you need to succeed.”
Hansen says you need only to list the world-class coaches working in Japan to understand how much intellectual property is operating in League One.
In addition to himself, Foster, Deans, Blackadder and Tabai Matson, he says it’s the quality of the support staff that helps elevate rugby to new levels in Japan.
“Everyone used to say that the physios here were no good. We have got a guy who is as good as anyone I have ever seen. Beauden Barrett wanted him to move back to New Zealand because he fixed his Achilles. He looks at things differently. There’s plenty of good people like that who are not recognised.”
But there is no element of “white saviour” from the New Zealand coaches who have gone to Japan.
There is total respect for the embedded culture, work ethic, innovation and ideas from the locals.
Kiyoto Inoue, general manager at Yokohama Canon Eagles, says: “The quality of the team environment is largely built on the culture Japanese people have.
“They work hard for the organisation and they work hard for the team. The majority of the people think about a team-comes-first culture.
“Having honest workers creates a strong foundation but what we also have now is top-quality people from overseas with the knowledge and experience to combine with the hard-working, honest people from Japan. This creates a good environment.”
A revolution of sorts has clearly taken place in Japanese rugby but, as Smith says, you need to talk about the elephant in the room.
“It’s good money for nine months of hard work and the rest of the year is your own. I know, for me, the money I would have made going to play in Europe was nowhere near what I was being offered to come here.”
There are certainly big salaries being paid to the big stars. The corporate backers who mostly fund the teams are willing to splash a bit of cash to get the superstars. According to reports, Mo’unga is paid NZ$2 million a season, while others are paid around the $1.5m mark.
But the days of older players turning up in Japan thinking they could do not much for a big payday are long gone. This is no longer a market where players can see out their last few years in relative comfort.
If they go, they have to throw their souls into the clubs they sign for because no one is handing out big cheques for the wrong sort of people.
“I want to work with popular players – the superstars,” says Inoue. “But the first thing they have to be is a good person. The right person.
“I only want to work with the right people. If the player is not a good person, they can destroy everything. We have a lot of world-class coaches and world-class players from outside Japan but we still have the beauty of Japanese rugby at the heart of it as well.”
Gregor Paul travelled to Japan with the assistance of a grant from the Asia NZ Foundation.
All Blacks v Japan, Saturday 6.50pm. Live commentary on Newstalk ZB, Gold Sport and iHeartRadio. Live match blog at nzherald.co.nz
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
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