The Hachi #8: Hooray for J
We're back, baby.
Today marked the start of the 2024 J.League season, and in exactly 10 weeks I’ll celebrate a private milestone: The 17th anniversary of my first-ever J.League game, a 3-1 FC Tokyo defeat to Kashima Antlers that went on to change my life in so many ways, personally and professionally.
It’s safe to say that had I not seen a listing of Tokyo-area games in Metropolis Magazine a few months after I’d moved to the capital, I wouldn’t have thought “hey, that might be neat,” packed up my camera and somehow made my way behind the goal at Ajinomoto Stadium, where the drums, flags, chants and unhinged passion — even in the face of a thorough stomping by the eventual league champions — were overwhelming and intoxicating in equal measure to a 21-year-old attending his first-ever club game1.
One game became more, away games became season tickets, a favorite chant bequeathed a name to both my first serious blog and the “secondary” Twitter account that has grown and grown — granted me the privilege of a global audience — and occasional writing gigs and podcast appearances turned into a sportswriting career now well into its second decade.
And throughout it all what’s kept me interested in the J.League isn’t just the players or the games themselves, but instead the culture that surrounds us at every matchday: The vibrant stadium food scene, the mascots and how importantly they’re treated by both kids and adults, the colorful uniforms, the rapid expansion of fan-created content in the social media era, and the thousands of traditions, memes and deep pockets of lore that have grown and flowered and spread seeds of their own as the league has grown from 10 teams to 60.
Dynasties rise and fall, and players come and go. But the culture the J.League has fostered, what it has encouraged to take root in Japan, and what clubs and fans have built around it all is truly incredible, and that’s the J.League that I’ve always tried to shine the spotlight on.
And as we look at what’s happening elsewhere in the soccer world — whether it’s the furor over Major League Soccer’s U.S. Open walkout and referee lockout, Bundesliga fans’ successful protest campaign against efforts to further commercialize the league, the Premier League’s shaky battle to shore up Financial Fair Play, or Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s continued efforts to pay their way into global legitimacy — it’s a good reminder that while the J.League is hardly perfect, it should be cherished and celebrated for what it is and what it could yet become.
Here are a few reasons why:
1. More accessible than ever
A big difference from when I first started getting into the J.League is how easy it is for foreign fans to get information on the league, not just from media and fan outlets but from the league itself.
While clubs have made scattered efforts to add English to their social media posts — and some, such as Nagoya Grampus, Urawa Reds and FC Tokyo, have added machine translation tools to their websites — the league itself has taken the biggest steps, with a full-service website, YouTube channel, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok serving up a constant stream of content for foreign fans.
Of particular relief to foreign fans visiting Japan has been the resumption of English-language ticket sales, which were paused by the pandemic and didn’t resume until mid-2023. As of right now, half the J1 is using the league’s service — far from ideal, but a start nonetheless.
That said, the decision by the league to cut its free YouTube streams from four games/round to two is puzzling, especially considering the lack of an OTT service such as that offered by South Korea’s K-League.
Ideally clubs should be creating more bespoke English content to supplement what the league is putting out, which is hopefully a development we’ll start seeing sooner rather than later.
2. Om nom nom
One of the best parts about the J.League matchday experience is the food, and one of the most surprising things for newcomers is exactly how much diversity you’ll find at stalls in and around each and every J.League stadium.
The Super Cup celebrates the league’s culinary scene by inviting one popular vendor from each club to set up shop outside the National Stadium, and the lines were oppressively long even two hours before kickoff on Saturday:
While the Super Cup is a great way to experience a bit of everything in one place, there’s really nothing like exploring what’s on offer at each stadium and discovering new favorites, something I hope to do a bit more of this year.
3. Off the rack: The best…
With 26 suppliers2 contracted to 60 teams, there’s a ton of variety to be found in J.League uniforms — even if sometimes it’s a little harder than it should be for fans, especially those living overseas, to actually get their hands on them.
My picks for the best of 2024, having gotten a chance to see all 60 in person at last weekend’s Fujifilm Super Cup:
J1 - Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo
I was really torn between this and Bellmare, who honestly have had some of the best J1 uniforms of the last few years, but in the end I have to admit the Consadole kit is clean as hell. Designer Yosuke Aizawa, the club’s creative director, even featured the new uniform on the Paris runway for his White Mountaineering brand’s Autumn/Winter 24 show last month.
Honorable mentions: Shonan Bellmare, Urawa Reds, Vissel Kobe
J2 - Kagoshima United
I love uniforms that draw from the history of the club’s region, and it really doesn’t get much better than Kagoshima United’s kit, which celebrates the club’s 10th anniversary by evoking Sakurajima, the active volcano that features prominently in the club’s crest and sometimes erupts to create one of the coolest backdrops in the J.League.
The lava-like design on the front represents the history that the club has built over the last 10 years, while the sleeves and back of the shirt also features different views of Sakurajima.
Honorable mentions: Mito Hollyhock, Tochigi SC, Thespa Gunma
J3 - Nara Club
I was going to write about this shirt in a past issue but decided to wait until I could see it in person, and just as I expected it’s a banger, with old school stamp-style calligraphy paying tribute to all of Nara’s cities, towns and villages, with embossing inspired by Shosoin kimono patterns. It’s just a great package that really gives you a sense of hometown identity.
Honorable mentions: FC Ryukyu, Vanraure Hachinohe, Zweigen Kanazawa
4. …and the worst
Listen, they can’t all be great.
For the life of me I cannot understand the decisions that led to Jubilo Iwata’s collars, which look totally out of place and are begging to collect sweat stains:
Ventforet Kofu’s decision to put the ostensible collarbone sponsor underneath the club badge, thus pushing their one star practically up to the shoulder, is similarly mystifying.
Getting to see all the kits at once offered yet another reminder that clubs have no idea what they’re doing in terms of uniform stars, and the hill I’ll die on is that the league needs to establish standards:
What are you doing, Avispa Fukuoka?
If I’m being brutally honest, the worst of the bunch was Adidas’ half-effort for Matsumoto Yamaga. The red Adidas logo is just offputing, the collarbone sponsor isn’t really designed well and fades into the shirt design (which itself is… I suppose an abstract representation of a ptarmigan, the prefectural bird and club mascot) and overall it just felt really, really flat.
Let’s see how clubs do with their third uniforms come summer.
5. Cross-sport cooperation
Japanese sports have often been reluctant to cross-promote for a lot of reasons, most of which can be categorized as “territorial pissing contests.”
But in recent years — whether it’s hometown synergy or sponsor relationships — we’ve started to see a lot more interaction, especially between the J.League and sports that aren’t baseball.
Which is how last weekend I ended up at an Asia League Ice Hockey game featuring heavy sponsorship by Tokyo Verdy, who share owner Xebio with the Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture-based Tohoku Free Blades.
The Free Blades are skating a number of games this season in Verdy-inspired green uniforms, and outside the arena were a number of sports demonstrations organized by some of Verdy’s dozen-plus sports teams.
Verdy are unique in that they are one of the few true multi-sport clubs in Japan, and in committing to events like this they’re really showing the importance placed on grassroots community relations here.
Other teams have also reached across codes — FC Ryukyu have co-promoted with Okinawa’s basketball and handball teams, while Kawasaki Frontale have worked closely with American football, basketball and even sumo. A few years ago such tie-ups were rare, but I think clubs are getting much smarter about how much potential engagement there is to be had with new audiences.
6. Big-stadium spectacles
The 2023 campaign was in many ways a callback to the J.League’s early years, where the old National Stadium played a key role in drawing neutral fans to marquee games — especially in an era when there were no teams calling Tokyo home.
Times have changed and that stadium, built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, is long gone. But the new National Stadium’s draw has not diminished, with even games featuring two non-Tokyo clubs drawing blockbuster crowds during the league’s 30th anniversary season.
According to the J.League, around 20-30% of first-time fans who went to a game at the National Stadium later went on to attend more games at participating teams’ respective home stadiums — a cycle the league clearly hopes to continue, having increased the number of games at the Tokyo 2020 showpiece to at least 13 this year.
Unlike in 1993, many of those games — nine, to be precise — will be hosted by Tokyo clubs. That includes four for FC Tokyo, who have made the stadium a cornerstone of their marketing push into central Tokyo, as well as four for Machida Zelvia, who will sacrifice the home advantage of Machida Gion Stadium in favor of a much larger venue for marquee opponents.
The pandemic being fully behind us is going to make it even easier for clubs to get fans through the gates — though a 170,000-ticket giveaway won’t hurt either — and even without any superstars like Andres Iniesta for the time being, a J1 average exceeding the all-time high of 20,751 set in 2019 doesn’t seem like that big a reach.
7. The (late) rise of UGC
Sometimes it seems like Japan is a reliable 5-10 years behind the west when it comes to culture-related trends, and that’s definitely true when it comes to user-generated content in the professional sports world.
There’s a few causes at play here, ranging from Japanese users’ preference for anonymity on the internet to the relatively late rise of YouTube here, as well as new media’s growth being somewhat hampered by the enduring dominance of traditional print/TV/radio outlets.
J.League clubs struggled to find their voice in the first 5-6 years of social media, but now they’re getting much smarter about using platforms like Twitter and Instagram not as a one-way channel for distributing information, but as a way to create and foster engagement with fans.
A 2022 decision by the league to officially allow fans to upload photos they take at games3 gave clubs a green light to start engaging with such content, and the league has worked with content creators such as FC Tokyo vlogger Kohalon and soccer culture tastemakers Shukyu Magazine.
Artists in particular are flourishing: Riota, who has gained a global following with his sports illustrations, has steadily been picking up work from clubs such as his local Renofa Yamaguchi and Sanfrecce Hiroshima — and landed a massive win in the form of a promotion visual for the J.League itself.
Ahead of today’s season opener between Sanfrecce Hiroshima and Gamba Osaka, I got to check out his ongoing exhibition at the Sogo department store in Hiroshima — featuring art that’s being plastered all over the city to promote the opening of Edion Peace Wing Hiroshima.
Other favorite artists of mine are getting their bags, whether it’s Fukuoka-based illustrator Hiroki Miyauchi for J.League International or mascot cartoonist Junsei Chida getting gigs for NHK.
The most important takeaway is that the clubs and the league are starting to realize that actually, not everything needs to be filtered through PR agencies and design firms. That in turn is resulting in a much more diverse array of content, which benefits fans, creators and clubs alike.
8. Sustainable soccer
Summers are only getting hotter in Japan (and everywhere else, for that matter), and the J.League is trying to figure out what that means, including establishing its own sustainability department and encouraging the development of climate-friendly initiatives.
Last weekend the league launched a new website highlighting its sustainability activities, including its cooperation with Japan’s environment ministry and emphasis on powering matches with renewable energy.
They’ve also released a green version of mascot J.League King, which is certainly a choice!
The mascot thing may be a bit of greenwashing, but the league both talks the talk and walks the walk with its Sharen (social cooperation) program, which is based around SDG-related activities carried out by individual clubs.
Whether it’s more plant-based items for sale at food stalls, environmentally sustainable merchandise packaging or bike-sharing programs, there’s a ton of things clubs can and are doing to promote climate action — and that’s before mentioning the fact that so many J.League fans use public transit to attend matches each weekend.
I had previously attended a dead-rubber WCQ between Japan and Bahrain in 2005 during my year abroad at Temple University Japan, and been to a Philadelphia Kixx game, but that’s it, hand to heart.
If I counted right, big shoutout to Tomo-san and his excellent coverage of J.League uniform culture
Worth noting that nobody ever followed the old rule, and clubs pretty much all looked the other way
Reading this (late) has definitely up the excitement for me with my first three J League games I'll be attending when I travel over there this summer. The timing of the league's YouTube channel rising to prominence plus the return of English ticket sales in recent years has really made me invested in the league and the games I selected to watch. Can't wait for the adventure in a few months.
Yay is J League time again baby! 😂😂😂