High And Low: The History of American Football in Japan - Part 1
Since ancient times, sports have served the purpose of allowing participants and spectators to briefly separate themselves from the inescapable austerity of the working class life. For those who play, it adds a tranquil dimension to the psychology of the athlete, allowing them the opportunity to exercise their internal anger and aggression in physical competition for the pursuit of victory and recognition. The spectators engage in the emotion of seeing those competitors play valiantly, inspiring and entertaining those that seek reprieve and reassurance that hard work, discipline and collaboration is still a recipe for success in challenging times.
Indeed, sports have broken down barriers between teammates and formed bonds between teams and fans despite different creeds and upbringings. In times of conflict and seemingly irreversible misfortunes, individuals of society look towards athletics for distractions and belonging to bridge the gap between themselves and their fellow citizen. This was the mission of Paul Rusch, an Angelical Christian minister that used the game of American Football as a method of creating harmony and understanding between Japanese and American cultures.
While American Football cannot be considered a major pastime in Japan, the altruistic roots of the sports’ presence in Japan has created a lasting impact within the Japanese community, empowering many of the citizens that have partaken in the gridiron game, especially after withstanding pushback from the highest levels of the Japanese government in the 1940s.
Dating back to the abolishment of the feudal system in the mid 1800s, Japanese athletics were predominately focused on the individual, with particular emphasis on the martial arts, such as Judo, Jiu Jitsu and Sumo Wrestling. During the Meiji Restoration period of the 1870s, team sports were gradually imported from various countries to Japan, most notably Baseball and Association Football, by way of foreign advisors who were brought to Japan to teach western ideals and to expand industrialization. In the United States, however, American Football was still in its infancy. Many schools had their own variations of the rules, some resembling a more brutal form of soccer, while other schools played an adjacent form of rugby. It would be another couple of decades before a rulebook would be codified and universities would compete under the same guidelines that gave football a distinct identity from it’s European influences.
As the evolution of the game progressed, the greatest minds in coaching would stop at nothing to conjure up strategies, tactics and loopholes that would give their team the winning edge. These men would later be recognized as pioneers of American Football, such as Walter Camp, Lorin F. Deland, Fielding H. Yost and Glenn “Pop” Warner. One such pioneer, University of Chicago head coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, would not only create one of the most dominant legacies in the history of college football, but would also introduce the game to a foreign exchange student who saw a global potential for a nationalist game.
Born in 1891 in Fukuoka, Japan, Heita Okabe was considered by many to a natural athlete. In addition to achieving the rank of black belt in Judo at a young age, he was also recognized as a proficient boxer, sumo wrestler and tennis player. Relocating to the United Sates as a graduate student at the University of Chicago to study physical education, Okabe took an interest to the game of American Football and joined the team as a left end and tackle. The game’s complexity and aggressive style of play left a great impact on Okabe. Furthermore, Okabe was equally influenced by Amos Alonzo Stagg’s staunch belief that amateurism in sports, particularly in football, was the purest way to develop character in young men.
Once Okabe returned to Japan, he began to disseminate information about American football, teaching the game to both high school and college students, as well as publishing articles in local sports magazines that explained rules and illustrated diagrams of formations and plays. Okabe’s mission to spread American Football in Japan would be short lived, however, when he withdrew from sports for an extended period of time after being stripped of his black belt due to ideological quarrels with the elders over Judo’s place as a sport versus being a traditional self defense and spiritual art form.
Nonetheless, Okabe’s introduction would prove to be an important blueprint for football’s fate in Japan, especially amongst university students. Around the same time that Okabe was publishing works about American football, a young Christian minister named Paul Rusch would travel to Japan with funding from the Young Men’s Christian Association to provide rescue support following the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. After a couple years in Japan, Rusch had developed ties with the local Anglican churches, and despite initial consideration to return back to the United States, he was persuaded by the Bishop John McKim, chancellor of Rikkyo University, to stay in Japan as a professor of economics due to his passion for teaching and capabilities as a leader.
In his new nation, Rusch would become active in the Japanese community. Having become a passionate affiliate to the Japanese American Association, a group of influential American and pro-American Japanese leaders, Rusch’s belief in American Democracy motivated him to foster transparency and understanding between American and Japanese ideals. But as Rusch would come to find, tensions were deeply rooted in Japanese society, toward not only Americans, but also the second generation Japanese Americans.
Japanese Americans, referred to as Nisei by first generation Japanese citizens, had dual citizenship in Japan and the United Sates, but many were forced to study in Japan as a result of their parents losing too much money during the Great Depression. The Nisei would face discrimination from the Japanese, many of whom felt that if a war between the two nations would occur that the Nisei would choose to fight for the United States. Having endured prejudice in America and Japan, the Nisei were considered outsiders in both ancestral lands, often feeling like they were without a country. This anger, loneliness and hostility would manifest and be expressed in various forms of self-destruction, such as alcohol abuse, violence and even suicide. As Rusch witnessed the alienation that was occurring within the Nisei community, he felt compelled to find a way to give them not only a sense of belonging, but also a way to steer them from the dark path they were on.
Rusch heard that pick up games of American Football were being played between students of Meiji and Waseda universities. Believing that he could garner enough interest from Meiji, Wasadea and Rikkyo universities, Rusch established the Tokyo Collegiate American Football League in 1934, and secured funds to procure uniforms and equipment for the players. Hosei and Kei universities each provided one additional player to the team, creating a roster of 26 Nisei students that would face members of the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club on Thanksgiving Day at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo in 1934.
The Yokohama team was primarily composed of English and European immigrants with vast experience playing rugby. Though these men were bigger and seemingly more athletic, they had little to no experience playing American Football. In front of a crowd that drew between fifteen and twenty thousand spectators, among them United States Ambassador Joseph Grew and Emperor Showa’s Younger brother Price Chichibu, the TCAFL team displayed extravagant energy and fight as they defeated their opposition 26-0. Though not everyone in the stands understood the rules of the game, the exciting atmosphere and support was overwhelming for the Tokyo All-Star team. It was an event that Rush felt was necessary and beneficial on multiple levels, both for boosting the morale of young men that felt they had no where to go, and for the opportunity to use football to create amity between American and Japanese cultures.
The success of this game prompted Rusch to organize a series of matches with an All-American collegiate team. In 1935, in a three game contest that pit American players from West Coast colleges against the Japanese All-Stars, the Americans won handedly by scores of 71-7, 73-6 and 46-0. Though these games were not competitive, the American team had much admiration for the Japanese’s fighting spirit and willingness to learn such as physical and complex game. One year later, the Tokyo All Star Team would travel to the United Sates with funding from American beneficiaries to play against the All Southern California High School team losing 17-6, and would then force a scoreless draw against Roosevelt High School, Hawaii’s top rated high school football club.
As American Football began to gain traction in Japan, Paul Rusch continued to pursue more opportunities to increase the exposure of the gridiron game in the land of the rising sun, even attempting to persuade Chicago Bears owner George Halas to venture on an Asian exhibition tour that included Japan, China and the Philippines. But even though Rusch was trying to promote football to distract his student from the harsh realities of their circumstance, nothing could make them ignorant of the turmoil that was occurring in front of their very own eyes.
On February 26, 1936, a radical group of young Imperial Japanese Army recruits, with the aid of the nationalist group League of Blood, organized a coup to overthrow moderate government officials that were viewed as making deals that were unjust towards the Japanese military. This led to the rebels occupying the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters and the assassination of three high level Japanese leaders, including the prime minister and finance minister.
Furthermore, Japanese newspaper journalists were beginning to propagate rumors of American spies being planted Tokyo. One such article claimed that Paul Rusch and another American Football coach, George Marshall, were using football as a way to spy on Japanese students, documenting information on their body measurements and sending it to the United States for combat intelligence. Rusch denounced the article as slander, and his students stood by him as other student groups protested and demanded the resignation of the university dean should Rusch and Marshall retain their positions, leaving his disciples facing scrutiny and apprehension. It was becoming apparent that the hostility Rusch was trying to eradicate through the use of American Football had been too prevalent to overcome.
Despite the tensions and the collapse of the ideals Rusch was working towards, however, his mission would eventually come to flourish and live on in the years to come. It would only have to wait until the Second World War would come to pass.
References
Touchdown: An American Obsession, Chapter Eighteen: American Football in Japan, Kohei Kawashima, Musashi University, Japan, 2016
https://repository.musashi.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/11149/2005/1/jinbun49_02_113_130_kawashima.pdf
https://korea.stripes.com/community-news/through-eyes-player-and-coach
https://zappawriting.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/the-atom-bowl/#more-371