How Jones transformed the Japanese

The Brave Blossoms saw beating the top teams as ‘impossible’ before the abrasive coach arrived

Close to 30 journalists surrounded Japan head coach Jamie Joseph as he announced his squad on Thursday afternoon. When the New Zealander was asked about his players receiving £13 a day in expenses, this caused an eruption from the press officer standing behind the towering former All Black. “Do not ask that question, he will not answer!” said the officer.

Joseph was nonplussed, but the Japanese media contingent looked deeply embarrassed that someone from their profession, although of a different nationality, had caused perceived offence – a profusion of bowing from the Japanese media scrum began.

In Japan, the protocol is that the media do not criticise sports teams. One Japanese journalist said: “How the British media complain and disagree is not the only way of doing things.”

The exchange was just one example of the alien culture attached to Japanese rugby. Despite being a minority sport which pales in popular interest behind baseball, sumo and football, the Japanese media have brought the largest contingent of any of the nations playing in the Quilter internationals, with close to 40 covering the match at Twickenham today, three times as many as from New Zealand, where rugby is the national sport and obsession.

This is partly due to the fact that Japan will host the World Cup next year, and also that this is the first time these two sides have met at Twickenham, plus the legacy of a certain Eddie Jones.

For all the deference surrounding Japanese rugby, one cannot help the feeling that the England head coach’s bombastic and provocative nature was a catalyst for the media frenzy the Brave Blossoms now attract thanks to the famous slaying of the Springboks in Brighton at the 2015 World Cup, under Jones’s stewardship.

Captain Michael Leitch, who grew up in New Zealand and is of Fijian extraction, explained how Jones changed the mentality in Japanese rugby for good. “I have been in Japan for 14 years, so I have a lot of experience there and one thing I always noticed was beating a bigger opponent always seemed impossible. That is because [opponents] have longer arms and longer legs, that was always the excuse. Eddie came along and changed how we thought about that. He changed the culture.

“When kids in Japan look at the national team, they see a team who are willing to win and beat top teams, that is how we have changed the culture. It is all about going out there to win.”

And when it came to their former coach dishing out the verbal warnings of England’s plan to “smash” Japan and warning them to “go to the temple to pray”, it was with a rueful smile that Leitch said: “You have got to love Eddie!”

At the Lensbury complex in Teddington, which was Japan’s base this week, there were different dishes on the menu than usual, as the party brought their own ingredients, including the paste needed for miso soup and various flavourings

‘The Japanese believe in one for all and all for one and that is why they take to rugby’

and pickles. When tighthead prop Koo Ji-won was asked what makes Japanese rugby culture unique, he came straight to the point. “The characteristic of Japanese rugby is that we are physically smaller but, on the other hand, we really work hard and focus on a quick game, quick tempo,” he said. Although the stature of most Japanese may not fit with the modern image of what an international rugby player looks like, the players seem to have the perfect mindset for the sport. They perceive it as a type of martial art – rugby is often referred to as rugby-do.

This aspect of how the Japanese have taken to rugby is highlighted in an exhibition, Brave Blossoms: The history of rugby in Japan, which opened at Twickenham’s World Rugby Museum to coincide with today’s Test.

Michael Galbraith, an Englishman who first went Japan in 1973 and played for the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club, the oldest rugby club in Asia, now acts as its historian and helped contribute to the exhibition. He believes rugby suits the Japanese psyche.

“People imagine how the Japanese are a totally different culture and that rugby is a very British sport, but because of how Japan is such a group-orientated society and as rugby is probably the team sport where relying on each other is so important, that really suits them,” he said.

“The Japanese really believe in the mantra of one for all and all for one and that is why they have taken to rugby. Although they are small, they are fast and excellent athletes. Their disadvantage is that they are small, but their advantage is how they train so much.”

Hard work and preparation is at the heart of everything, despite being essentially, in Joseph’s words, “a team of amateurs” bar overseas players such as Leitch, who are full-time professionals. As Koo put it: “To the English rugby fans, we want to show the world we are small, but we work hard and have a high work-rate.”

It would seem that hard work is the not-so-secret weapon the Japanese will bring to this historic fixture.