Although overshadowed by the performance of the Nadeshiko Japan and the glorious play of Homare Sawa in the last few years, the Samurai Blues look to make an impact on their fifth consecutive World Cup. With a middle of the pack draw in Group C, Japan looks to make it two tournaments in a row getting to the knock out stage. While western expectations remain low (hell, half the press pundits have us finishing below Greece), the team’s under the brilliantly eccentric Alberto Zaccheroni for this moment. We’re ready to show the world that 2010 (and our women’s teams) aren’t a fluke: They’re a sign of Asian progress.
Modern History
The growth of soccer is still a relatively new phenomenon in Japan, with the first professional league (the J-League) starting in 1993. As recently as 1994 we suffered exits in the qualifying stage, the most memorable being the “Tragedy at Doha” where an Iraqi goal in the 90th minute scuttled our first chance at an appearance.
Since then the national team and the sport have grown. The J-League now is a multi-division system with relegation and promotion. 3 AFC Asia Cups, two knockout stage appearances at the World Cup, and some victories against traditionally difficult European sides have helped increase confidence in the lead-up to 2014. While winless in last year’s Confederation Cup, we fought Italy to a near stand-still in a 4-3 match.
Players to Watch
The two most interesting players are undoubtedly Keisuke Honda (of AC Milan) and Shinji Kagawa (of Manchester United). While both players struggled this season in their league fixtures, the two play a sublime, high pace, technical football as good as any attacking pair in the game. There are few players worth changing your entire team’s tactics around, but Honda has shown to be that sort of player, orchestrating a great attack as a classic number 10 or in the false-nine role.
Perhaps the most likely to surprise, though, are the Bundesliga duo of Hiroshi Kiyotake (Nurnberg) and Shinji Okazaki (FSV Mainz). Kiyotake is a technical attacking midfielder that we keep producing in large numbers (who knows why, maybe it’s the water?), looking to make his first real impact on the national team stage. Okazaki, an attacker who overtook Kagawa this past season as a the highest scoring Japanese player in the Bundesliga looks to prove the conventional wisdom wrong about the lack of talent up front.
Predictions
Group C is a good draw in terms of overall strength. While Cote d’Ivoire as the opener will likely be tough, their best players are past their prime. I think we have a good chance of beating them 2-1 in the opener. Against Greece we’re likely to struggle simply on the basis of physicality. Technically we’re the better side, but this will be a match of technical attack vs. physical defense. In the end I’m expecting grinding out a 1-0 win. Finally, Colombia, which is likely to be our early tournament stumbling block, is going to be the toughest match. Japan does not do well against South American teams in general, and I don’t think this will be any exception. My prediction for this one will be a 2-1 loss to Colombia. Whether we get out of the group, I feel will likely be a matter of goal differential.
Added Bet
Finally, as an added bet, once again if Japan make the knockout stage, I will be bleaching my hair like I did in 2010. In fact I think I will be making it lighter for each additional stage we get into at that point.
Wow, I knew Japanese firms were doing a lot with robots, but I didn’t realize Honda was making soccer players now. I thought only the Germans did that.
On a serious note, thanks for this. I didn’t know much about the team. I look forward to watching them.Report
I will look forward to seeing photographs of you with lightened hair, Nob.Report
My hair kind of feels safely black for now.
Fortunately the team should get better as the tournament progresses.Report
I was under the impression that “Nippon” was kind of a right-wingy term used primarily by the kind of people whom you’re not record as not being particularly fond of. I’m not trying to tell you how to speak your own language or anything, but just for my own edification, am I wrong about that?Report
Dude, it’s a transliteration of the Japanese name for Japan. “Japan” is an exonym. Ugh.Report
Can I ask a general question about exonyms (great term, BTW, never heard it used before)?
I understand why an exonym would be used in another language, if the native language’s noun contains sounds not easily-reproducible (or readily-representable in writing) in the other language. But why do they get used in other cases?
IOW, why don’t we always use transliterations like “Nippon”, if that’s (pretty close to) what Japanese people say?
(This has bugged me ever since that time I almost missed a train to Prague, because I wasn’t going to “Praha”.)Report
Glyph,
Cultural superiority, methinks. Munchen, Mumbai — it pays to know the actual, real name for places. (also, the Peking transliteration of Chinese was awful beyond repair).Report
I dunno, things like Bombay/Mumbai are similar enough (when spoken) that I can see them as simple mishearings by English-speakers that stuck.
But “Praha” has no “g” in it.
And in the case of Nippon-Japan, ‘n’ sounds nothing like ‘j’ in English.
Why make these sorts of changes, it just makes things unnecessarily confusing?Report
I imagine it’s mostly inertia. I know that’s not much of an explanation, but it’s really hard to get rid of terms that are well-entrenched in a language and culture, particularly when there’s no immediate practical reason to do so. I mean, most of us aren’t missing trains to Praha very often.
Football, on the other hand, has made me say “Napoli.” So contra that silly study, it really does bring people together.Report
Differences in names come about in a variety of ways. Sometimes it’s just mishearing, sometimes it gets corrupted because there’s little spoken contact between the two languages, sometimes it’s because or rivalries for places or areas (as in the case of a lot of German or Russian-named cities in much of Central and Eastern Europe), sometimes it’s because the name used by the speakers of an outside language were derived from older names. This last one appears to be the case with Prague, which in Old Czech was Praga, which presumably got shortened and Frenchified (as the Frenchies are wont to do).Report
I understand that once they are there, it’s hard to change them. I’m just not sure how they got there to begin with in some cases, although I guess it’s possible they are artifacts of the written and spoken languages of both cultures drifting in the intervening time (maybe “Prague” and “Praha” were closer equivalents in the past due to the way one or both languages were written or spoken at that time).Report
Too slow!Report
Looking up the origin of “Japan,” it appears to be the Portuguese fault, and a corruption of the medieval Mandarin name for Japan, and “China” to be a late-middle age Italian (Marco Polo) loose transliteration of the old Sanskrit name for at least part of what’s now China. And we’re stuck with both ’cause some Portuguese and Italian guys were hard of hearing or lazy 500-600 years ago.Report
Though to be fair, it is an older transliteration (but the one normally used for the country name itself by the people living in the same country). (the transliteration they’ve been teaching in American school for the last few decades is ‘Nihon’.)Report
I’m aware that “Japan” is an exonym. As Kolohe says, modern Japanese people overwhelmingly refer to their country as “Nihon.” “Nippon” is some combination of old-fashioned, formal, and/or nationalistic, but I’m not sure of the specifics, hence the question.Report
Chris, that’s a pretty churlish response to a guy who’s explicit about his own need for edification.Report
Damon, Nob is a secret samurai.Report
Whoops. I misread Kolohe’s comment. He’s wrong, though (unless I’m actually misreading it now)—I am absolutely certain that “Nihon” is in fact preferred overwhelmingly in daily use. Some additional research suggests that “Nippon” is more formal/old-fashioned than nationalistic.
Now that you mention it, the modern Mandarin pronunciation is not all that far from “Japan”: “Riben,” which is pronounced kind of like ZHIH-buhn. Nihon/Riben actually comes from Chinese, from the fact that Japan is east of China and thus appears to be the source of the rising sun.Report
Brandon,
now that I can believe. And it’s Japan’s own Isolationist Tendencies that caused us to be using the Chinese name, I’d wager. 😉Report
James, the political part of the comment made me churlish.Report
@james-hanley
Not any more he isn’t.Report
No politics, except in the descriptive sense. I’m just surprised to see Nob using the term due to my impressions of how the term is typically used. Which may in fact be totally wrong.Report
Okay, looking it up on Wikipedia, I see that that is in fact the team’s official name. Still curious about the politics and usage of the term “Nippon,” though.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQPwS9rkMK0
I found this informative.Report