Brilliant Japan bring comfort to a nation in mourning following typhoon destruction

IF LIFE must go on after tragedy, rarely does it go on so beautifully. With this triumph, Japan made a breakthrough in world rugby, entranced us with their skill and tenacity and bestowed comfort on a nation mourning at least 19 deaths and untold damage from the previous day’s typhoon.

Scotland were not just facing 15 men in red and white with a nice blossom on their shirts. They were confronting a nation, a quest – and a spiritual intensity few sides could have coped with. Perhaps they were promoting the difficult reality that life must go on, even the day after a natural disaster that required 27,000 military personnel to help with the relief work.

This great game might not have happened. It might have been a ghost match, haunting this World Cup: one of the great what-ifs of modern sport. In the event of a cancellation, Japan would have joined Ireland in the last eight. But they would never have escaped the charge that Scotland had been deprived of the chance to make the knockout rounds.

“Lucky hosts,” they would have said. Nobody will say that now. Japan beat Scotland first with radiant attacking rugby, then by fighting for every inch of ground when the Scots came back into the game after the break. Rarely will you see brilliance backed up by brawn to such history-making effect.

In cities, Japanese crowds tend to be quiet, introspective, undemonstrative.

But these Brave Blossoms have opened up a world of noise for their huge throng of fans, who received a bow on all four sides of the ground from their team when Scottish resistance was finally broken. Japan’s followers are now citizens of a game that has risen from mid-table here to become a guiding light.

Maybe it was the sight of Japan’s Yu Tamura kicking and missing a penalty while a siren wailed far beyond the stadium that told you this was more than a rugby match.

Tamura missed that one, but Japan were mostly deadly – a “devil” of a team, as Michael Leitch, their giant of a captain, promised they would be.

Their first-half pageant of tries was achieved with unanswerable speed by a side who found angles and offloads from the gods. They moved the ball with blinding pace and threw pressure overboard to reach the interval 21-7 ahead after falling 7-0 behind.

Pressure. Expectation. Both might have undone them. Japan had never been to a World Cup quarter-final. All week they talked up the dream of becoming one of rugby’s top-eight nations. With strategic intent, they delivered a huge breakthrough for rugby – a breakthrough for sport, in many ways – with a level of verve the All Blacks would have envied.

The amazing win over South Africa in Brighton four years ago is now a movie. It might have been a romantic one-off. Instead Japan are stronger now than they were under Eddie Jones and have beaten Ireland and Scotland in this pool stage.

The exuberance of their attacking will disconcert South Africa, their quarter-final opponents in Tokyo in a re-run of the “Brighton miracle”.

To stiffen their resolve, coach Jamie Joseph used the build-up to portray

Japan as the victims of a conspiracy to “undermine” their achievements. It worked. Leitch had called on them to “stave off the pressure” and “be brave”.

Obduracy is one thing. It acquires startling power, though, when you add it to the kind of tries scored by Kotaro Matsushima, Keita Inagaki and Kenki Fukuoka inside 42 minutes. Each was dazzlingly quick and all three sent the crowd into raptures.

Underlying all this mesmerising action was sadness; a sense that the true cost of Typhoon Hagibis was only just emerging. Also, that Japan will never escape these extreme weather attacks – especially in this age of climate change.

Leitch was suitably overcome, as was Jiwon Koo, who went off in tears with damaged ribs. Leitch said: “I’d just like to thank everyone who turned up tonight. It’s a tough time at the moment with the typhoon.

“Everyone who is suffering with the typhoon, this game was for you guys. The crowd was massive for us. Today was more than just a game for us.

“Today was nothing about skill, it was all about emotion and physicality. We are representing Asia, we are representing Japan, so we are going to give everything in the next couple of games.”

Before the game, officials from World Rugby revealed that staff had slept in the stadium to replace match-day dressing that had been taken down on Friday.

More detail was placed on the cancellation policy. The sticking point: the impossibility of transferring two games to Oita at the weekend due to a shortage of team camps. One might have been possible, not two.

From there, a desire to treat all equally led to the call-offs, with Italy “desperately disappointed” still by the loss of their game with New Zealand – but Scotland appeased by the resurrection of this Pool A decider.

There are no question marks out there now. No unresolved issues. A heroic victory has changed world rugby. The game that was nearly lost to unruly nature will instead live on forever. (© Daily Telegraph, London)