Racing: Boom time for Japanese stock: A rising turf power is buying the world's best horses. Joel Else reports Japan Cup highlights the yen's growing currency in international competition

IT IS a sign of the times that the biggest earner in a cosmopolitan field of 16 going into Saturday's Japan Cup is Rice Shower, winner of five of his 16 starts including the Japanese St Leger. His winnings of almost 530 million Yen (around pounds 3.3m) not only put Europe's top earners to shame, but also the dollar-rich American grass stars, Kotashaan and Star Of Cozzene.

Perhaps more pertinently, Rice Shower is unlikely to go off at much under 16-1. At the moment, if you want to make money racing horses, Japan is simply the place to be. And soon the Japanese will be operating on a level playing field with the Americans and Europeans in terms of quality.

Japan has nearly 600 stallions operating in a tightly organised regime, and it will have escaped the attention of few that a large proportion of these are top quality racers from Europe and America.

Two of the best horses of recent times, the brilliant Dancing Brave and 1989 US Horse of the Year, Sunday Silence, quietly slipped off to Japan at the start of the decade. Since then, such top-class (and finely bred) performers as Dr Devious and Rodrigo De Triano, Arc winners Tony Bin and Carroll House, champion juvenile Hector Protector, and Arlington Million victors Golden Pheasant and Tolomeo have found their way to Japan.

This year alone, it has been announced that Britain's top middle-distance horses, Opera House, Commander In Chief and White Muzzle, will all stand in Japan, while dual Derby winner Old Vic is on loan there. Even the oil-rich Maktoum family cannot turn down the amount of yen being offered by the Japan Racing Association and the top studs on Hokkaido island, such as Shadai Farm, created by the late Zenya Yoshida, owner of White Muzzle, and CB Stud.

But it is the Japan Cup in Tokyo, worth over pounds 1.3m to the first four home, that is the showcase of the Japanese industry. Now in its 13th year, the 1 1/2 -mile race has become the one truly international event in the worldwide racing calendar. It has been won by representatives of seven different countries, embracing all of the globe's top training centres. Japan and America have each taken three runnings, while Australia, Britain, France, Ireland and New Zealand have all taken the prize home once.

The first European winner was the gallant Irish mare, Stanerra, in 1983, while Lady Tavistock's Jupiter Island became the sole British winner in 1986, running the fastest 12 furlongs ever by a British-trained horse under an inspired ride from Pat Eddery.

Unlike the Breeders' Cup, Europeans have done fairly well in the Japan Cup, with 15 of the raiders finishing in the first four, as opposed to 11 from North America. Notably, the apparently inferior Japanese horses have finished in the first four 16 times, with the front-running Katsuragi Ace winning in 1984, Symboli Rudolf, probably Japan's greatest horse, cruising home in 1985, and last year the Japanese Derby winner, Tokai Teio, catching the Australian Naturalism and France's Dear Doctor on the wire.

It is not easy for foreigners to win the Japan Cup, and the roll call of unplaced horses includes Classic winners Triptych, Moon Madness, User Friendly, Dr Devious and Quest For Fame. Tony Bin and Carroll House, the King George winner, Belmez, and the grand old American gelding John Henry also bit the dust.

It should not be surprising: the rise of Japan is inevitable. Last year the average prize-money per race was Y31m ( pounds 193,750), and the average horse won Y16.8m ( pounds 105,000). In addition, 13.1m people attended racecourses in 1992, betting Y3.6 trillion, averaging at Y1m per race.

That sort of money talks, especially in an essentially state- run industry. Japanese horses are now bred from the same bloodlines as those in America and Europe, and they are more than capable of winning their own races, 55 per cent of which will be open to foreign-bred runners by 1999. The question is, how long will it be before they are winning our top races?