Eddie has his men in perfect harmony
Japanese way of life is secret to his success
ON THE subway line that stops below the England team hotel in the Tokyo suburb of Shinjuku, an elderly woman boarded the train with several members of her extended family one day last week. She was assiduous in making sure her grandchildren and her son and daughter sat down before she did. There were no seats left. She said she was happy to stand. Before the train moved off, another passenger gave up his seat for her.
On the train an advert played on one of the screens in the carriage showing the All Blacks players rushing around a Tokyo shopping district flattening bystanders with tackles. Seconds later, it becomes apparent that each person had been saved by the tackle from a calamity that was about to befall them.
The advert was for an insurance firm. Its slogan was ‘Tackle the Risk’. But it played to the same idea at work in the matriarch’s attitude to her family and in the stranger’s kindness in letting her sit down.
You do not have to be in Japan for long to grasp that the concept of
group harmony, or wa, is at the heart of society here. It is also something that England coach Eddie Jones has placed at the heart of his coaching philosophy.
Brought up by his Japanese mother and Australian father in Australia, he was exposed to principles of social responsibility and the importance of the collective from an early age. It is something he seeks to pass on to his players.
As he stood on the 43rd floor of the team hotel last Thursday, gazing out across the rooftops of Shinjuku and watching workers on the top of tower blocks trying to secure loose fittings ahead of the approach of Typhoon Hagibis, which forced the cancellation of England’s scheduled group game with France yesterday, Jones talked about the influence of wa on the squad.
He looked at a copy of the book Japan: The Paradox of Harmony, which explores the guiding tenets of Japanese society and repeated that he had given each member of England’s backroom staff a copy of it to help them prepare for the World Cup.
The Paradox of Harmony details the different facets of wa: the extreme loyalty evident in the long hours worked by Japanese salarymen, the self-reliance and service to others that begins in kindergarten, where Japanese children wipe the tables before lunch, the rigid orderliness of rules.
‘In Japan,’ the authors write, ‘the ideal of social harmony came to be known as wa, the creation and maintenance of peaceful unity and conformity within a social group, with a commitment to cohesive community taking precedence over personal interests.’
Translate it to sport and it’s “There’s no ‘I’ in Team”, basically. And it is easy to see the influence of wa in Japanese sport. In a book about the differences between Japanese and American baseball called You Gotta Have Wa, Robert Whiting wrote about how in Japan injured pitchers are encouraged to play through pain, something that mystified their US counterparts.
When an online firm wanted to demonstrate wa for another World Cup advert, it illustrated it by showing a simulation of a line-out and one player lifting another high into the air to catch the ball as it is thrown in. Again, that idea of selflessness is something that Jones has tried to impose on the teams he works with.
‘It played a big part in my upbringing, he said. ‘The manners you pick up that you don’t really understand at the time. As a small example, when I was a kid I’d go to someone else’s house and I’d always have to take a gift. I’d always say to my mum: “Why do I have to take a gift?” No one else did. It is all about showing respect, having harmony.
‘If you look at Japanese society and you look at the way Japan regenerated itself after the Second World War, it was all about being part of a team, knowing your role. That was a driving force of how we put the Japan side together for the 2015 World Cup, that philosophy.
‘Every good team in the world has that philosophy, everyone has a role, know your role, support the other person to do their role.’
Some of what is involved in wa would come naturally to team players anyway. It was also much in evidence as Tokyo prepared for the onset of the typhoon. For all the criticism aimed at World Rugby over the cancellation of the England-France and New Zealand-Italy games, the overriding concern of the organisers had to be for the safety of spectators.
It made for a disappointing weekend at the World Cup but when he was asked for his reaction to that, Jones drew on another strand of the Japanese psyche.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘the Japanese have a saying — “shikata ga nai” or “we can’t control it”.
‘We all like to think we’ve got power above and beyond what’s going on in the world at the moment, but we don’t — these things happen and you just ride with it.’
As England’s quarter-final clash with Australia or Wales in Oita looms next Saturday, the influence of the host nation on their thinking is growing and growing.
As a kid, I’d take a gift to someone else’s house. It was about respect