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Out-of-touch aunts and uncles immune to World Cup fever

Richard Lloyd Parry
Saturday 01 June 2002 00:00 BST
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Even last night, with the first match under way in South Korea, Japan still had not made up its mind about the World Cup, and it may be several days before it does.

Even last night, with the first match under way in South Korea, Japan still had not made up its mind about the World Cup, and it may be several days before it does.

You could tell from the demeanour of the presenters on NHK, the BBC of Japan. Television personalities here vary from the trendily youthful to the humourlessly earnest, with little in between. For the World Cup, it is the former who appear to be in control. They sat around a couple of coffee tables, their dress painstakingly casual, commenting rather uncertainly on the colourful razzmatazz of the opening ceremony. A young pop star was brought in to offer his views. But they still managed to give the impression of middle-aged and slightly out-of-touch aunts and uncles doing their best to enjoy the Glastonbury Festival. As for NHK, so for the rest of Japan.

Not that any effort has been lacking. Japan fought hard for the right to host the Cup and, despite the disappointment of being forced to co-host with South Korea, £3bn has been spent on lavish new stadiums and infrastructure. Local communities, especially those hosting the World Cup training camps, have gone to touching lengths to make their guests feel welcome. And – a decade after the birth of professional football in the J-League – Japan has a core of true soccer believers as dedicated and knowledgeable as any in Europe or South America.

It has even more people for whom putting on a good show at international occasions is a duty as well as a pleasure. But for much of the population, this is an occasion as puzzling and alarming as it is fun.

In Tokyo, at least, the tournament is far more visible in the media than on the streets. A few quarters of the city – mainly Roppongi, the traditional play ground of carousing foreigners – have a carnival atmosphere but elsewhere you could spend days without knowing that the World Cup was going on. Tokyo is too vast to be transformed even by tens of thousands of visitors. Instead, there are a series of discrete cities within the city. In most of them, life is going on much as usual, with the difference that the TVs in the noodle shops are tuned to football rather than baseball or sumo.

The Japanese government continues to give the impression of experiencing more dismay at last-minute hitches than delight at being the centre of the world's attention. The smouldering row over the late delivery of tickets – by Byrom, the British company which has printed them – generates a stream of bad-tempered faxes from Japan's World Cup organising committee, Jawoc, from the sports ministry, and from various bodies responsible for match security. Yesterday, Fifa, football's world governing body, finally admitted what Jawoc has been dreading – that 100,000 fans will have to pick up their tickets on the day of their match, opening up all kinds of potential for misunderstanding, bad temper and fraud.

Some 2,000-3,000 England fans arrived here yesterday, to join the 1,600 already there. A total of 16 have turned away because of past criminal records or other indications that they might be trouble. The police are out in force in Roppongi, which is being treated by them like a newly liberated city, imperfectly cleansed of potential snipers and suicide bombers.

Inevitably, perhaps, there is a hierarchy accorded to the visiting teams. In the villages where Argentina, Italy, and England have made their camps, there has been no shortage of volunteers for the the festivals, welcome receptions and cheerleading corps organised in the visitors' honour. But when a few of the citizens of Matsumoto tried to organise a local fan club for Paraguay, they could not attract enough members.

Much depends on the next few days. If the England fans get through their first two fixtures without laying waste to key areas of Roppongi, if the football is exciting enough to win the interest of the casual viewer, and if the Japan team performs well, then this will be a World Cup that Japan will be happy to remember. If not, it will leave little trace after it has gone, apart from a few large and empty stadiums and a lot of confirmed prejudices.

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