NEW YORK TIMES




 

Japan’s 19-12 victory over Ireland at the Rugby World Cup has people asking: How far can the Brave Blossoms go?

TOKYO — Japan’s stunning 19-12 victory last week over Ireland, one of the favorites to win the Rugby World Cup, made experts take notice and put a provocative question into circulation here: The upstart Brave Blossoms couldn’t actually win the tournament, could they?

Even the Irish were quick to concede that the result was not a fluke. Ireland didn’t play that poorly, but it was outplayed in virtually every aspect of the game. The match statistics showed the two teams were about even in time of possession and controlling the ball in the opponent’s territory, but Japan gained 471 meters (515 yards) to Ireland’s 318.

Ireland Coach Joe Schmidt was asked in the postgame news conference whether Japan had exceeded his expectations.

“No. I don’t think the Japanese performance exceeded my expectation — unfortunately,” Schmidt said. “We expected them to be as good as they were. We knew they were going to be incredibly tough — and so it proved.”

Schmidt praised Japan’s skill level, intensity and fitness.
“The longer the game went, the more oxygen they got from penalties and from the skill that they showed, and you’ve got to commend them for that,” he said. “It’s not the first time we’ve seen them do it. It’s not a surprise to us that they were incredibly tough to beat.”

Doing well in the Rugby World Cup is important to Japanese sports officials, who view the tournament as a dry run for the Tokyo Summer Olympics next year. Ticket sales have been robust, and even stadiums in remote locations involving lower-ranked teams have been nearly sold out. Organizers are projecting 400,000 international visitors in Japan for the tournament, and the Japanese fans have enthusiastically embraced the event.

Though still classified as a Tier 2 rugby nation, Japan has participated in each Rugby World Cup, held every four years since 1987. But until it notched three victories in 2015, it had won only one match.
The sport has a long history in Japan, but lags in popularity behind baseball, soccer and sumo. Japan has a well-organized domestic league that has attracted quite a few international stars, though it is not fully professional.

So what makes Japan a potential threat to the Tier 1 teams in the tournament? And what might stop the developing Japanese juggernaut?
To start with, it is a team that was well prepared for this tournament, a point the Japan coach, Jamie Joseph, emphasized after the Ireland match.
He said Japan had been preparing for the game much longer than the Irish have, “the last year at least, if not the last three years.” He added, “The Irish have been thinking about this game since Monday.”

 

And the Japanese aren’t likely to get too far ahead of themselves. They play a winless but talented Samoa team next, on Saturday, and despite the Samoans’ 34-0 shellacking at the hands of Scotland, Joseph will not take them lightly. Samoa was heavily penalized and not happy about it. One player was sent from the field twice with yellow cards, the second one bringing a red-card dismissal. The Samoans will be highly motivated, but will have their hands full.

The Japan team is confident, almost to the point of being cocky, a trait its veteran captain, Michael Leitch, embraces. He told Reuters before the tournament that the team’s goal isn’t, as widely reported, just to make it out of the pool stage and into the quarterfinals, or to be considered a Tier 1 rugby nation.

“I think you need to be very brave in what you say; we want to make the quarterfinals, but ideally, we want to win the World Cup,” Leitch said.
“That is an outrageous statement, but it changes your whole behavior: If you want to make the quarterfinals compared to if you want to win the World Cup, it changes your behavior. So I guess we are going to have to try to win the World Cup and see how far we can get.”

To do that, of course, Japan does need to advance out of Pool A. Four years ago, it became the first team to win three pool stage matches and not advance, despite its historic 34-32 upset of South Africa, a match that everyone here in Japan is thinking about. But to this bunch of players, South Africa is ancient history.

“Finally, we’ll be freed from the South Africa talk,” the veteran scrumhalf Fumiaki Tanaka said after the win over Ireland. “We’ve been through that all the time for the past four years. I want to now say, it’s not just South Africa, and we showed to the kids if you put effort in you can beat anyone.”

Japan also is fortunate to have an elite coach in Joseph, who has won a title in the Southern Hemisphere’s strong Super Rugby league with the New Zealand-based Highlanders. Joseph has a top assistant in the attack coach Tony Brown, who worked with Joseph in New Zealand. Both men also have deep ties to Japan, having played in Japan’s Top League. Brown is known for creative offensive plans.

And in Leitch, Tanaka, flyhalf Yu Tamura, hooker Shota Horie and the expat South African flanker Lappies Labuschagné, the team has a lot of veteran leadership.

The extremely popular Leitch, in particular, is interesting for what he brings on and off the field. Born in New Zealand to a Kiwi father and a Fijian mother, he moved to Japan at 15 to go to school.

Leitch gives interviews in flawless Japanese, and his image is all over Japan in advertisements and on World Cup posters. On the field he is known as a tough taskmaster who demands the most from his teammates and leads by example. He has obviously passed on that “We can win it all” mantra to his teammates.

Japan also has one of the tournament’s most exciting breakaway scoring threats in Kotaro Matsushima, a speedy back who can play several positions but has been deployed at wing in Japan’s first two matches. He scored a hat trick in Japan’s opening match against Russia.

The pool the Brave Blossoms are in is also favorable. A bonus point win — scoring at least four tries — over Samoa or a win or draw against Scotland should be enough to ensure Japan one of the two top spots in the pool needed to move on.

The coaches aren’t talking about it, but by winning the pool the team would avoid a likely quarterfinal clash with New Zealand, the overall tournament favorite. Should Japan win the pool, it would face the second-place team in Pool B, which most experts expect will be South Africa — Japan’s victim in 2015.

South Africa beat Japan soundly, 41-7, in the two teams’ last warm-up test before the World Cup a month ago, but it is a team Japan knows well and still believes it can beat, thanks in part to the 2015 upset.

But teams like New Zealand and South Africa that are deep, have powerful forward packs that can control the scrums, and are tactically sophisticated will prove difficult to beat. Then again, Ireland was just such a team. Even playing at home, Japan will be a big underdog if it makes the quarterfinals.

The words of Ireland’s longtime captain, 37-year-old hooker Rory Best, may have put the All Blacks, Springboks and any other title contenders on notice immediately after Japan dismantled the Irish game plan on Saturday.

“We knew how tough it was going to be,” Best said. “Anyone that has ever been shocked hasn’t seen how good they are.”