Japan rugby bosses thinking big and focusing on being global ahead of new professional league starting next month
- Lotte Corporation president Genichi Tamatsuka has been appointed to run Japan League One
- League has financial backing of corporate heavyweights such as Nippon, Mitsubishi, and Panasonic
Japan’s new-look professional rugby competition will launch next month with bold ambitions to win not only a domestic but a global audience, to attract the world’s best players and to expand the sport’s foothold in Asia.
Lotte Corporation president Genichi Tamatsuka, a former college rugby player who is now one of Japan’s most influential business leaders, has been appointed to run Japan League One, which kicks off on January 7 with competition among 24 teams across three divisions.
The league has the financial backing of corporate heavyweights such as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Daiwa Securities Group and HITO-Communications. Team owners are a directory of Japan’s largest corporations: Panasonic, Toshiba, Kobe Steel and Toyota among them.
In outlining his vision for the new league, Tamatsuka said “a totally different world” was coming.
But some countries with established competitions may be looking warily toward Japan and to a league which, unfettered by salary caps, might prove irresistible to the world’s best players.
Tamatsuka said League One was inspired by the success on home soil of the Japan national team at the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Japan became the first Asian nation to host the quadrennial tournament and the first to reach the World Cup quarter-finals, beating Ireland and Scotland in the group stage.
The team’s success broke through the usual indifference of most Japanese sports fans to rugby and for the duration of the tournament the nation was captivated.