A two-time Asian Football Confederation player of the year who was also shortlisted for the Fifa world player of the year, according to Nakata it’s all part of who he was, not who he is. “When I was born I was not born to be a football player, I was born to be myself,” he said. “So football was just my passion. I didn’t see football as my career or as my dream.”

Thanks to his current role as founder and chief executive of Japan Craft Sake Company, Nakata has emerged as an invaluable cultural ambassador seeking to enlighten both a domestic and international audience to the layered craftsmanship and history behind the country’s much-vaunted fermented rice drink.

Engaging and considerate, the enigmatic Nakata seems somewhat unaffected by fame. Still, whether it’s receiving visitors at his midtown Tokyo office or hanging with rock star Lenny Kravitz, he is acutely aware that his massive profile has afforded him an invaluable platform.

“This is my life now,” he says. “But my previous profession was football and because the game is so big it can affect my new work. Of course, this is my challenge but I am not saying that I regret my past, football has helped me considerably and made me a lot of friends.”

With a new Japan emerging globally, thanks to the recently completed Rugby World Cup and next summer’s Tokyo Olympic Games, it’s important not only to bring Japan to the world, but to bring the world to Japan as well, and few are as qualified as Nakata to do that.

“If you don’t know about other cultures,” he says, “you can’t really appreciate and understand your own culture. I left Japan at 21 to go to Italy and everything was great, new and different. The language, the food and the culture, I learned so much there.”

The more time he spent abroad soaking up European culture, the more he thought about his native country. “People would ask me about Japan but I had been so busy when I was young that I never had time to discover the country,” he said. “I really did not know anything about Japan,”

For so many athletes, the end of their career is forced on them and they rarely leave on their own terms. “But in my case, I quit,” Nakata says. “I still had a contract with Fiorentina but I said I’m done. I didn’t know what to do next, I needed to find my passion. I live only for passion.”

So he hopped in his car and travelled to every single one of Japan’s 47 prefectures on a voyage of discovery that would last seven years. “Craftsmen, farmers, sake makers, I just got out to find out about Japan,” he says. “Culture is in the local people, it’s everyday life – why you dress this way, why you eat these things and why you drink that. To understand culture, you need to look at everyday life.”

Of course, being one of the most recognisable faces in the country could be a bit of a handicap and his initial reception was mixed. But Nakata has an insatiable curiosity and is a keen listener. “Some treated me like a celebrity and some were suspicious and asked me why do you come here, you are not really interested in our industry,” he said. “But I spent so much time there and time is valuable. I think they eventually understood that. If the craftsman is too busy doing his work and doesn’t talk for half an hour, we just watch. The point is, I don’t want to talk, I want him to talk.”

Football star-turned-designer Hidetoshi Nakata on style and sake

What emerged was a sense of respect and awe for an industry that goes back thousands of years, as well as a zeal to help share this Japanese heirloom globally. Although Japan Craft Sake Company supplies a very limited and extremely precious range of sakes that can only be found in select high-end restaurants in Hong Kong and across Asia, Nakata is clear about his intentions. “We are not a company that makes sake,” he says. “We are a company that is making a platform to help the sake industry.”

Not only has the company developed an app called Sakenomy, that identifies sake labels which are largely indecipherable to non-Japanese, they have created a series of original sakeware, Nathand (a portmanteau of nature and hands), designed to help enhance the aroma of sake and the piece de resistance, the world’s first minus-five degrees Celsius refrigerated sake cellar. “The refrigerated wine cellar has only been around since 1976,” Nakata says. “And it changed the industry, people were now drinking wine at the right temperature. Well, it’s the same with sake. I taste great sake and I see how breweries make it and keep it. If you don’t keep it at the right temperature, the taste is naturally affected.”

It’s all part of a larger movement to properly bring sake, and Japanese craftsmanship, to the world thanks to one of the country’s most revered sporting craftsmen. But just don’t ask Nakata where he sees his company and the industry heading over the next few years. “I am not calculating numbers,” he says. “I am not calculating my life. I am a person who never thinks in the future because I live for passion and passion is day by day.”