Magnificent Japan offer comfort to a nation in mourning
After destruction left by typhoon, rugby stars unite in a performance that will last forever
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. And 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.
A “100 bucks a day” team, according to their coach, Jamie Joseph, Japan have now joined that fabled elite. The amazing victory over South Africa in Brighton four years ago is now a movie. It might have been a romantic one-off – a weepy underdog tale. 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 the spirit and ambition of four years ago has been added a new layer of ruthlessness: an ability to close games out. To stiffen that resolve, Joseph used the build-up to portray Japan as the victims of a conspiracy to “undermine” their achievements. If his purpose was to add an edge of anger, 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
‘Lucky hosts’ they would have said, but nobody can accuse Japan of that now
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 – who has learned the language, led the team and held the whole operation together – was suitably overcome, as was Koo Ji-won, who went off in tears with damaged ribs (all his team-mates consoled him).
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 all for you guys. The crowd was massive for us. Today was more than just a game for us.
“There was talk about this game not happening, so I’d like to thank everyone who has made this game happen. From the very start we played with our heart.
“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. The pitch itself, meanwhile, had taken 900 millimetres of rain in a day but somehow drained the deluge.
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 28-21 win has changed world rugby. The game that was nearly lost to unruly nature will instead live on forever.