The Global Game of Football: The 2002 World Cup and Regional Development in Japan

Author(s): John Horne

Source: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 7, Going Global: The Promises and Pitfalls of
Hosting Global Games (2004), pp. 1233-1244
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3993807
Accessed: 05-04-2022 06:05 UTC

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Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 7, pp. 1233-1244, 2004 E Carfax Publishing Taylor & Francis Group

The global game of football:

the 2002 World Cup and regional
development in Japan

JOHN HORNE

ABSTRACT Analysis of major sports or 'mega'-events, including the Soccer

World Cup, enables consideration of several overlapping and intersecting issues.
These include: centre-periphery relationships related to governance in world
sport; power relations between nation states, supranational sport associations
and the sports business; the media-sport-business connection; the cultural
production of ideologies needed to cover emergent fissures- such as over who
actually controls 'global games'; and what the costs and benefits of hosting
these events actually are. By focusing on the relationship between the 2002
World Cup and the development of the social and football infrastructure in
contemporary Japan, this paper offers insight into the relationship between the
global and the local, and especially the last of these issues. It concludes that
attempts to utilise football and the (co-)hosting of the 2002 World Cup for sports
purposes has benefited the development of the sport as a commercial spectacle
rather than as an everyday practice. Related goals, such as the relocation of
population from the centre to the periphery, economic income generation and a
general improvement in the quality of life of the Japanese population as a whole,
are still far from being accomplished.

Introduction: hosting global games in Japan'

The journalist Ian Buruma provides an interesting sketch of the importance of
hosting the 1964 Summer Olympic Games to Japan in the prologue to his recent
book Inventing Japan: 10 October 1964 was the day on which Japan was able
to rejoin the international community and display new transportation and
communications systems, and the rebuilt capital city of Tokyo. The event gave
the Japanese the opportunity to impress the numerous visitors with their
friendliness, impressive organisation and technology. The Games were a great
success in sports terms for the hosts as well. Japan won 16 gold medals (coming
third after the USA and USSR). Buruma argues that 'To the Japanese, always
acutely conscious of their ranking among nations, sporting victories were one
way to soothe memories of wartime defeat.'2
These successes were, however, tinged with disappointments. Two track and

John Horne is in the Scottish Centre for Physical Education, Sport and Leisure Studies, University of
Edinburgh, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ. Email: [email protected].

ISSN 0143-6597 prinVISS5N 1360-2241 online/04/071233-12 ? 2004 Third World Quarterly

DOI: 10.10501014365904200281249 1 23 3

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 JOHN HORNE

field athletes (marathon runner Tsuburaya Kokichi and hurdler Yoda Ikuku)
failed to achieve up to expectation and both committed suicide after the Games.
The Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee was allowed to exhibit judo as a
demonstration of the nation's sport and culture. As well as the traditional
weights, an open division was included. In the final Japanese favourite, Kami-
naga Akio, was expected to take the gold medal against Anton Geesink, the
six-foot six-inch tall Dutch champion. However, on the final day of the Summer
Games, 23 October, a crowd of 15 000 people in the Budokan in Tokyo saw
Geesink win. As Buruma describes it, there was silence and sobs as 'once again
Japanese manhood had been put to the test against superior Western force, and
once again it was found wanting'.3 But then Geesink made a formal bow to his
defeated opponent and the Japanese crowd applauded his gesture.
Buruma suggests that 'overconfidence, fanaticism, a shrill sense of inferiority,
and a sometimes obsessive preoccupation with national status' all played their
part in modern Japanese history up to the 1960s. 4 While these concerns are still
reflected in Japanese policy towards sports and especially the hosting of major
events, we contend that more social and economic developmental concerns have
been to the fore since the 1970s.
Today Japan is the world's greatest repository of wealth. Japan's 'high savings
and under-consumption' has supported 'the US's low-savings, high-debt regime'
for the past decade.5 Yet, since the bursting of the bubble economy at the
beginning of the 1990s, the Japanese economy has been stuck in the doldrums.
Far from being evenly balanced, the distributional patterns of the crisis are
strongly bound to the long-established regional disparities of productivity and
prosperity. Towns, cities and rural districts of the northeast, the south and other
localities of the Japanese peripheries that have always struggled to keep pace
with the move towards an information- and services- based, post-Fordist society
have continued to fall behind the metropolitan areas and industrial zones of
Central Honshu. Gradual industrial decline and steady migration into the
overcrowded capital and major cities has had severe repercussions for the vitality
of regions confronted with a rapidly ageing population and a diminishing income
tax base. Within this scenario sport and leisure have recently been assigned
special importance to counterbalance the widening gap between the centre and
peripheries in Japan.
Local policy planners now envision two general benefits emerging from the
promotion of sports.6 On the one hand, sport is considered as an economic
income generator. For the past decade numerous cities and municipalities of
various population size have been enthusiastic about the prospects of economic
growth fuelled by investment in new sport facilities and theme parks, the
subsequent increase in tourism and the anticipated improved image of the region.
Forging partnerships with other beneficiaries of regional development, particu-
larly private enterprises, local governments have assumed a driving role in
paving the way for business expansion and new kinds of public-private partner-
ships. On the other hand, it was considered that a modern and enlarged sports
infrastructure would have a positive impact on enhancing the quality of life of
the local inhabitants in a region. Similarly, staging sports events of a major scale,
or being the hometown to a team competing in one of the professional leagues,

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 THE 2002 WORLD CUP AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN

might provide sources of regional pride, thereby fostering feelings of community

belonging and local identification. Such intangible benefits were also considered
to help prevent the younger population from migration and bridge the gap
between old residents and newcomers.
It is in this context that this paper considers the impact of the 2002 World Cup
on football and the sports infrastructure in contemporary Japan. Drawing on the
major trends of the past two decades, with particular reference to the build-up
to the launch of the professional football 'J League', and the costs of hosting the
2002 World Cup finals, it outlines the impact of the global game of football on
contemporary Japan.7

The football periphery on centre stage8

Although the official Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA)

emblem of two footballs imprinted with the map of the world depicts the Far
East close to the centre where the two balls intersect, there can be no doubt that
Asia is peripheral in terms of football power. The year 2002 was the first time
in history that FIFA had allowed the finals to be played away in the football
world's Asian periphery. The Asian continent is home to a third of the world's
population, and members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the
European Union of Football Associations' (UEFA) counterpart in this region,
account for more than 40% of the world's football players. But in 2002 only two
Asian teams were able to qualify, together with the host nations, compared with
13 fixed places for European nations, with only half the number of, more or less,
regular football players. There was a chance for Iran to go east in 2002 as the
fifth Asian team, but it failed to qualify in the play-off against Ireland, which
thus became the 14th UEFA team. Asia's peripheral position is further expressed
in terms of the number of football officials, professional players and achieve-
ments at previous World Cup finals. South Korea, which has a football
population of 0.5 million (including 5000 female players and 410 professionals),
made its fourth consecutive appearance, but for Japan, with 3.3 million players
(20 000 women and 1120 professionals), it was only their second time. While
Saudi Arabia travelled to the USA in 1994 and to France in 1998, China (7.2
million players, 40 000 women and 1748 professionals) made its debut at the
2002 World Cup finals. Until 2002 an Asian team had never reached further than
the second stage of football's most prestigious tournament.
Basically football in China, Japan and South Korea shares a similar fate
inherited from Europe's colonial past. The peripheral position of football in East
Asia is a result of the history of the world and its geopolitical structuring a
century ago. In each of these countries football was, and still is, in keen
competition with other mass sports. In China football is supposedly the fourth or
fifth most popular sport. In Korea and Japan professional football is overshad-
owed by the overwhelming popular support for baseball and for the traditional
wrestling sports of ssireum and sumo. Contrary to the Western experience, sports
did not evolve gradually out of familiar folk traditions. Lumped together in the
cultural backpack of Western foreigners, modern sports were imported during
the latter half of the 19th century, at a time when the geopolitics of imperialism
had a rather downgrading impact on national consciousness in the Far East.

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 JOHN HORNE

The consequences for local body cultures and leisure lifestyles have still not
been exhaustively explained, and the concomitant processes of localisation
remain to be fully investigated. Whether one sees sport as a form of cultural
imperialism or as a deliberate part of cultural domestication and emulation
remains debatable. Numerous studies have analysed the particular role of the
nation state and its institutional actors in adapting the new cultural practice for
its own needs. Again in contrast to the West, the firm grip of the state over the
collective body is a characteristic feature of East Asian modem sport history that
even in Japan, arguably the most liberal of the three countries, has prevailed until
recently.
As the launch of Japan's first professional football league, the J League, in the
early 1990s-and subsequently many other professional football leagues in East
Asia-have demonstrated, far from being the sole property of Europe, or the
Western world, association football has become a truly world-wide phenomenon.
To demonstrate the global scale of football interest, and probably also to
legitimise its significance, the world football governing organisation FIFA
initiated the 'Big Count', a survey of football participation, during summer 2000.
According to numbers provided by FIFA's 204 national member organisations,
242 380 590 people were actively involved in playing the game (against 127 464
professional athletes), that is, roughly one in 24 of the world's population. In
reoccurring waves of a four-year cycle, the world is reminded by the sport's
central event, the FIFA World Cup, of the fact that football is the 'global game'.
Likewise, the World Cup tournament reveals that football is as much a
spectacle and a commodity as it is a form of physical fitness and recreation.
Following the 1994 World Cup Finals in the USA it became clear just how much
global interest had been generated by the sport event. Over 3.5 million football
supporters attended the US tournament, it was estimated that more than 30
billion watched the games in front of TV screens, and 40 multinational
corporations paid US$400 million in total to gain 'official product' status and
guaranteed global advertising. Four years later the World Cup phenomenon took
another leap forward at France 98. One hundred and ninety countries competed
in the qualifying stages to reach the 32 finalist positions-the largest number
ever. According to FIFA numbers, 37 billion spectators followed the World Cup
finals via television and an estimated audience of 1.7 billion watched the host
country, France, beat the defending champions, Brazil, in the final match.
Corporate sources contributed more than 50% of the French organising com-
mittee's ?240 million turnover. The late Ian Taylor described the 1998 World
Cup as the largest 'mass marketing of happiness' ever. 9
In 2002, for the first time in history, FIFA decided to award the tournament
to Asian hosts and to more than a single nation. This unprecedented, and to most
observers downright surprising, move even forced FIFA to change its own
regulations. As Butler, and Sugden and Tomlinson have suggested, internal
power struggles within FIFA were at the root of the decision.'0 It provoked the
formation of a fragile alliance between the two East Asian states and their
people, whose relationship was still deeply tainted by memories of the Japanese
annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910 and the colonial oppression during
great parts of the first half of the 20th century.

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 THE 2002 WORLD CUP AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN

The result before kick-off was breathtaking: at least US$4.4 billion ($2.9
billion in Japan and $1.5 billion in Korea) were invested in sport facilities and
equipment at the 20 designated venues. Out of 20 stadiums, 17 were entirely
new, representing the state of the art in sports-leisure multiplex architecture. The
biggest starting field ever of 194 national teams battled it out in 777 prelimi-
naries to be seated among the remaining 29 finalists-France, as the reigning
World Champions, and the host nations Japan and Korea qualified automatically.
FIFA granted the world-wide broadcasting rights to a private sport-marketing
group for $800 million, a roughly tenfold increase on what the international
consortium of public service broadcasters had paid for the previous tournament.
Two international broadcast centres in Seoul and Yokohama were equipped with
the most sophisticated video and audio transmission technologies, and the press
centres in both countries were prepared to serve the needs of up to 16 000
accredited representatives of the media. This represented a 1.5-fold increase
since the World Cup in France 1998.
The 2002 World Cup was an opportunity to introduce an international
audience to a vibrant and variant, yet hardly well known, football region at the
edge of the Eurasian continent. European public and media awareness only
started to rise in the 1990s, thanks to the nearing World Cup finals and the
increasing presence of a handful of Japanese and South Korean players on the
rosters of some major European clubs. Despite the relatively early appearance of
the South Korean national team at the World Cup finals in 1954, and a longer
history of professional football spanning nearly two decades, domestic football
in South Korea has remained in the limelight, overshadowed by the sparkling
kick-off of Japan's J League in 1993. Much of the public awareness in the West
about Japan's new professional football league was a result of the economic
power of the new labour market that opened up in the Far East, providing a rich
pre-retirement income source for a handful of ageing South American and
European football stars. The business logic of the mass media and its obsession
with novelty failed to pay tribute to the fact that even in Japan popular interest
in football dated back to much earlier times. It is instructive, however, to review
the formation of the J League as a distinctive use of football.

The J League kicks off

The development of the J League since the early 1990s demonstrates what can
happen when sport as a form of social policy and sport as a tool of both regional
revitalisation and urban development plans intersect with market forces and
national prestige thinking.11 The grand design of the first incorporated pro-
fessional football league in Japan was indebted both to the European club sports
system and the American business model of professional team sports. Member
clubs were expected to be closely linked to a local entity, a hometown, thereby
raising local pride and fostering community feeling among residents. Clubs were
equally supposed to work as autonomous and economically viable corporations,
rather than relying on subsidies and the management decisions of owner
companies, as is the case in Japan's professional baseball leagues. In addition the
establishment of the J League was also closely linked to three national objec-

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 JOHN HORNE

tives, of strengthening the national team, improving the international achieve-

ments of Japanese football squads, and attracting the World Cup finals to Japan.
When Joao Havelange, then president of world football's governing body FIFA,
declared in the late 1980s his intention to award the 2002 World Cup to an Asian
host, Japan only had one specialised football stadium of considerable size and
only three stadiums matching FIFA standards (that is, able to accommodate
40 000 spectators). Constructing the required infrastructure of a minimum of
eight stadiums would not have been possible without broadened interest in
football and the support of the public in Japan.
The J League as a consumer product was introduced to the prospective market
in a very sophisticated and gradual way, which stretched over a period of almost
four years. During the first phase the general concept of the new league and the
brand name 'J League' itself were presented to the public. In the background the
market potential was analysed, prospective sponsors approached and its first
member clubs, the franchise partners were selected. Sony Creative Products
(SCP), which secured the exclusive merchandising rights for the entire J League
until 1998, had been in charge of devising a thoroughly styled corporate identity
for each of the teams, consisting of mascots, team songs, slogans and clothes. It
also sold on rights to use J League designs to several sub-licensees and opened
boutiques in over 100 locations to sell J League merchandise. SCP's intention of
displaying cute and cool characters was a deliberate attempt to attract Japan's
most important consumer group, young females, who had repeatedly shown their
power to move entire leisure markets since the 1980s. The players only entered
the stage at the last moment. Six months before the kick-off of the J League (in
May 1993), the first J League (Nabisco) Cup was staged as a trial tournament.
The pilot drew high media attention and offered a welcome opportunity to
instruct the nation in basic football rules and tactics.
A scheme of persistent product placement was devised by the marketing giant
Hakuhodo, which readily jumped in when its biggest rival Dentsu declined the
risky job of establishing a new sport alongside the popular spectator sports of
baseball, sumo and various forms of racing (horse, cycle, powerboat). In fact
Hakuhodo clearly profited from the experience Dentsu had gained from its 49%
partnership in ISL, the sport marketing arm of Adidas. Hakuhodo meticulously
copied the basic business principles of 'The Olympic Partner Program' (TOP)-
involving income from sponsorship, merchandising and the central negotiation
of TV rights sales and the lucrative idea of event packaging-which Dentsu had
devised for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the 1980s.
The J League has been incorporated as an autonomous, non-profit organis-
ation. Income from broadcasting rights, merchandising and sponsorship is
distributed to all members, after funds necessary to cover operational expenses
have been deducted. Various conditions were imposed on clubs applying to
join.12 Currently, there are 28 full members in the two J League Divisions, J
and J2. For example, each club had to be a registered corporation specialising
in football, a stipulation designed to force the management, as well as players
and coaches, to be fully professional. Teams were also requested not to have the
names of their owner as the team name. J League football, unlike corporate
football and professional baseball, would not be used simply as an advertising
tool.

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 THE 2002 WORLD CUP AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN

This policy was agreed in the face of strong disapproval from potential
sponsors, and the dispute was settled with a compromise allowing the sponsor's
name to appear as part of a club's formal name, on match tickets and club
clothing, but only for five years. Within a year, however, no company name
could be found among the colourful, multilingual team names. The previous
amateur side Toyo Industrials turned into professional Sanfrecce Hiroshima,
Matsushita Electrics became Gamba Osaka and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
changed into the Urawa Red Diamonds.
J League teams were to have a balanced ownership, representing hometowns
(or cities) and regional prefectures as well as sponsors. In addition the J League
was seen as a major tool of urban redevelopment and relocation away from the
capital and hence a second condition was the cultivation of a hometown
environment. Each club was expected to forge strong links with its local
community. Teams had to promise to contribute to the promotion of football in
their region. In exchange, the regions were expected to support the candidate
clubs, most clearly by building the infrastructure and by other more direct forms
of investment.

Co-hosting/costing the World Cup

The costs of staging the Soccer World Cup, and the potential gains from doing
so, have been rising dramatically. The 1966 competition in England realised ?2
million, but USA '94 and France '98 made considerably more both for FIFA and
the host countries. It has been estimated that the organising committee for France
98 made $65 million (JPY 7.8 billion).'3 Tourism surveys suggested that over 10
million people visited France because of the World Cup, spending in excess of
?0.5 billion on hotels, travel and food.'4 Before the co-hosting decision, although
it was anticipated by the Japanese bidding committee that 2002 would cost more
than ever, it was hoped that it would also earn more, thus helping the Japanese
economy to recover from the recession that began in the late 1980s. After the
co-hosting decision any realistic hopes of such high returns were dashed.
According to an estimate of revenue shortfalls released three months after the
decision became public, Japan stood to lose as much as 50 billion yen (about
?280 million) by co-hosting the World Cup.
As already noted, while FIFA requires a minimum of eight venues, South
Korea and Japan each provided 10, with most of them built especially for the
World Cup.15 Before the co-hosting decision each of the 15 host city candidates
in Japan had contributed JPY 235 million (roughly ?1.2 million) to the World
Cup bidding campaign. The imminent elimination of five cities intensified
intercity competition and readiness to spend on the campaign. Why cities with
a great football tradition, such as Hiroshima or Nagoya, were not selected, has
never been explicitly stated, although insider accounts hint at a centralised
decision-making process. Japan was divided into five regional zones, and each
zone would receive a fair allocation of venues. In addition, the existing
infrastructure and scheduled sports tournaments of the following decade were
taken into account. Hiroshima was thus disqualified for three reasons: first, it
already possessed a huge football arena, the 'Big Arch' which had been built for
the 1994 Asian Championships; second, the high 'brand recognition' value of the

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 JOHN HORNE

city was not considered to need additional international promotion; third, Oita,
which was in the same 'southwest Japan' zone, received the go-ahead instead
substantially because it was governed by a former member of the ministerial
bureaucracy, who used his personal connections to the central administration in
Tokyo very effectively to develop roads, railways and industries in the econom-
ically underdeveloped region. Nagoya may have dropped out because it was
hometown to Grampus Eight and its main sponsor Toyota, rival to Nissan and
main sponsor of the Yokohama F Marinos. Its citizens are also notorious for
running citizens' movements against unwanted large-scale public programmes
(including the Summer Olympics in the early 1980s that some argue presented
it to the South Korean city of Seoul). In the long run local authorities in Nagoya
or Hiroshima may have been quite happy with the decision as the Japan
Organising Committee insisted on the successful candidates providing further
new investments and abstaining from recouping income generated by renting the
stadiums to FIFA.16
Pumping public money into the construction of huge sport stadiums does not
find unanimous favour in Japan. Since the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano,
which for various reasons failed to reproduce the atmosphere of the Tokyo
Olympics and the mystical experience of national rebirth, negative sentiments
against boosterism abound among many of the inhabitants of the debt-ridden
prefectures in Japan. The unfulfilled promises of reviving the economy and
reinstalling trust in the future have contributed to widespread pessimism and a
dismissive stance against the construction of mega-sites for just a single
occasion. However, the construction sector is at the heart of Japan's political
economy, and growth machine ideologists are central actors in political parties,
lobbying groups and non-governmental organisations. One prominent representa-
tive is the industrialist and real estate tycoon Tsutsumi Yoshiaki, one of the
richest men in Japan and official member of many influential sports committees.
Under his presidency, the Japan National Olympic Committee was turned into a
professionally run sport agency, and it was probably his presidency of the Japan
Ski Association that single-handedly drew the Morioka World Cup in 1994 and
the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998 to Japan. While the Nagano Olympics
were reported to have generated a surplus income of 4.5 billion yen (F24
million), the profits largely bypassed national taxpayers.17
Nogawa and Mamiya discussed the impact of the 2002 World Cup for those
cities that have constructed new sport facilities with substantial public invest-
ment. Heated debates over urban development took place in many of the World
Cup venue cities about the prospects for post-tournament usage since these cities
had spent an excessive amount of public yen on their stadiums. In this respect
the situation in Japan has begun to reflect developments in North America,
Western Europe and Australia. Nogawa and Mamiya also drew a rather negative
picture of the current state of public facility management in Japan in their
analysis of the economics of the World Cup venues. Mid- or long-term regional
government bonds (city and prefecture) had provided 70% of funds for the
construction of the World Cup stadiums. For example, the construction cost of
the Niigata 'Big Swan' Stadium was $250 million and consisted of 82.5% from
the prefecture budget and 17.5% from city sources. The construction cost of the

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 THE 2002 WORLD CUP AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN

Oita Stadium was some $210 million and over half ($125 million) of the total
funds was collected from general obligation bonds issued by Oita Prefecture.'8
Evidence suggests that most, if not quite all, of the World Cup stadiums in
Japan have left a negative financial legacy. Both the scheduled repayment of
loans and interest, and maintenance costs of running the facilities after the circus
left town would remain as heavy burdens on local taxpayers. The citizens of
Kobe, for example, will only see the last interest payments for the Wing Stadium
paid back in the 2030s. Operating the prestigious Sapporo Dome, a multifunc-
tional state-of-the-art leisure complex, costs a minimum of JPY 2.6 billion
(about ?13 million) per year, and only thanks to a very densely scheduled
calendar of events, including large-scale cultural spectacles, commercial exhibi-
tions, and the only available calendar of professional football and baseball games
in Hokkaido, northern Japan, was break-even achieved in 2002. In all other cases
sound management systems had not been established. The newly built National
Stadium in Yokohama started to look for a name sponsor immediately after the
World Cup; so far in vain. The arena of Nagai in Osaka has also put its owner
city into the red. While both Shimizu S-Pulse and Jubilo Iwata-teams that have
a home stadium of their own-promised to patronise the new Ecopa Stadium in
Shizuoka as regular customers, the nearest J League team to Miyagi Stadium,
Vegalta Sendai, refused to move to the inconveniently located stadium.

Japan's 'construction state' and the World Cup

Despite the almost unanimous conclusion of numerous studies that public

investment in sports facilities yields only minimal economic benefits, officials
continue to push for new facilities and public money continues to be spent on
them.19 In many cases these projects are trumpeted as successful not because of
any objective assessment about their benefits to local residents, but because of
the symbolic power of the edifices themselves.20 In considering the situation in
Japan it is also important to recognise the extent to which construction and civil
engineering have long underpinned its political economy. McCormack refers to
this as Japan's doken kokka, or 'construction state'. This can best be understood
as an equivalent to the phrase the 'military-industrial complex' applied to the
USA since the 1950s. It focuses attention on the construction industry and public
works as Japan's major industry and the close links between construction, the
bureaucracy and government. In 1993 for example 43% of national investment
went into construction and Japan outspent the USA on construction by a ratio of
2.6: 1.21
Following the administration reforms carried out in 2000 the Ministry of
Construction merged with the former Ministry of Transport and other planning
agencies to form the National Land and Transport Ministry. It is currently
responsible for 80% of tax revenues available for public works. Japan' public
works is three times the size of that in the UK, the USA or Germany. It currently
employs seven million people, or 10% of the Japanese workforce, spending JPY
40-50 trillion ($350 million) per year. It amounts to 8% of the Japanese GDP.
The result is that Japan has more dams and roads per unit of land than the
continental USA. Half the Japanese coastline and most of its rivers are wrapped

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 JOHN HORNE

in concrete. Ninety per cent of its total wetlands have been drained and lost, and
its biodiversity is threatened.
McCormack argues that the centrality of construction and public works in
Japan's economy is the product of the operation of an 'Iron Triangle' of
construction industry chiefs, senior bureaucrats and politicians. Rather than
providing a Keynesian kick-start to a troubled economy, however, many con-
struction projects, including the World Cup stadiums, may have 'served as
steroids, bloating rather than strengthening the economy'.22

Conclusions

The expansion of professional association football in Japan in the 1990s and the
co-hosting of the FIFA World Cup finals in 2002 were expected to deliver many
sporting and non-sporting benefits. Some J League clubs may be assisting this
process as they are already developing into multi-sport clubs.23 Particularly in
terms of ownership, the joint efforts of local authorities, citizens and companies
from the region of the football teams seem to provide a promising new model
of sport business which is in marked contrast to traditional Japanese arrange-
ments or contemporary business models prevalent in the USA or in Europe.
Nonetheless three critical issues in particular stand out. First, the J League and
the World Cup have not been really successful in terms of achieving regional
balance. While the number of football pitches and high quality facilities has
considerably increased over the decade, the overall concerns about unipolarity
and hyper-concentration in the Japanese economy have not been mitigated.
Despite J League conditions governing team location, most of the teams that
have prospered since 1993 have been located in the large population centres
stretching out from Chiba Prefecture in the east to Hiroshima in the west. The
most successful clubs-in 2003 as well as in 2002, 14 out of 16 Jl teams-all
came from the densely populated Kanto and Kansai area. The former reserva-
tions against permitting a Tokyo-based team were overthrown when Tokyo
finally opened its own purpose-built football stadium. Since 2001 two JI
teams-the renamed Tokyo Verdy and FC Tokyo, the former corporate athletes
of Tokyo Gas-have shared the Ajinomoto stadium in the capital.
Second, concerns about the usage of the large stadiums built for the World
Cup continue to be voiced.24 Some are earmarked for use as sites for the
All-Japan Sports Championship that moves from prefecture to prefecture annu-
ally. Some will provide venues for J League teams, but the capacity will rarely,
if ever, be reached for regular league matches. As such local residents will
continue to be saddled with large tax burdens to cover annual maintenance costs,
as happened in Nagano after the 1998 Winter Olympics were staged there.25
Third, concentrated effort on the 2002 mega-event and professional football
still threaten to distort the financial basis of community sports. The primary
objective of starting a Japanese football lottery (the toto) in March 2001, after
long disputes about the moral effects of public gambling, was to help all local
sport organisations and community sport clubs to operate, not merely to aid the
2002 World Cup and football stadiums. But the Japanese World Cup Organising
Committee (JAWOC) received a massive allocation of the toto for its operations

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 THE 2002 WORLD CUP AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN JAPAN

in 2002. A number of non-hometown municipalities and sports associations

strongly opposed what they considered to be illegitimate allocations of lottery
generated funds, particularly because financial resources for sports promotion
and corporate sponsorships have become so limited in the past 10 years. While
both JAWOC and its Korean counterpart KOWOC claimed that they were short
of money before and during the World Cup, they both ended up in surplus. The
actual size of the surplus differs according to the sources referred to. As Nogawa
notes, the official JAWOC report on the tournament stated that the surplus for
JAWOC would be JPY5.48 billion (about ?28.2 million).26 Other reports suggest
that the figure was considerably greater. Certainly JAWOC has been able to
build a new headquarters and museum in central Tokyo with the money, while
the Korean Football Association has reportedly distributed its larger surplus to
a wider range of sports-related agencies.
Thus the future of community sports and the fate of professional football in
Japan are linked to each other. While community sports continue to struggle with
the scarcity of facilities, staff and funds, the political economy of football is
arguably suffering from the rapid expansion of the J League and the co-hosting
of the 2002 World Cup. Within a decade nearly 30 professional teams have been
established, dozens of large stadiums erected and hundreds of players, coaches
and staff put under contract. As the economic decline in Japan has forced private
corporations to withdraw from sponsoring, public corporations have jumped in
to fill the gap. Yet the companies owning the teams are still in the red, and it
is an open question whether the same corporations will ever be able to pay back
to society by establishing 'an environment in which anyone could enjoy sports
appropriate to their age, physical condition ability and objectives'. So far this
long-term goal, taken from the J League's mission statement, is still some way
from being accomplished.

Notes
This paper originates from a contribution to the Workshop on 'Going Global: the Promises and Pitfalls of
Hosting Global Games', held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Russell Square, London, 11-12 June
2004.
1 This paper draws on several years of collaborative research conducted with Wolfram Manzenreiter. For
more details on the background to the 2002 World Cup, see J Home & W Manzenreiter (eds), Japan,
Korea and the 2002 World Cup, London: Routledge, 2002; J Home & W Manzenreiter, 'Accounting for
mega-events: forecast and actual impacts of the 2002 Football World Cup finals on the host countries
Japan and Korea', International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 39 (2), 2004, pp 187-203; W
Manzenreiter & J Home (eds), Football goes East: Business, Culture and the 'People's Game' in China,
Japan and Korea, London: Routledge, 2004; and W Manzenreiter & J Home, 'Public policy, sports
investments and regional development initiatives in contemporary Japan', in J Nauright & K Schimmel
(eds), The Political Economy of Sport, London: Palgrave, 2004.
2 I Buruma, Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle 1853-1964, London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2003, p ix.
Ibid.
4 Ibid, p xi.
5 G McCormack, 'Breaking the iron triangle', New Left Review, 13, 2002, p 5.
6 See Z Koiwai, 'Sokka ni yoru machizukuri' (Urban development by football), Toshi Mondai, 85 (12),
1994, pp 59-69; 0 Kubotani, 'Supotsu shinko ni yoru kiban seibi. Genji to kadai' (Maintaining the basis
by sports promotion), Toshi Mondai, 85(12), 1994, pp 43-57; and T Onishi, 'Supotsu to chiiki kasseika'
(Sports and regional revitalisation), Toshi Mondai, 85 (12), 1994, pp 3-14.

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 JOHN HORNE

7 It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the impact of the 2002 World Cup on the Republic of
Korea in any detail. Korea explicitly used 2002 to 're-brand' itself as a leading economy after the Asian
economic crisis of the late 1990s. With the additional bonus of success on the football pitch-finishing
in fourth position-the Korean organising committee and the Korean Football Association reportedly
secured a $140 million surplus. Two new professional football teams were established in order to utilise
some of the stadiums that were especially built for the World Cup. These, and other developments in
Korea, are discussed by several of the contributions to Home & Manzenreiter, Football goes East.
8 The next paragraphs draw on Manzenreiter & Home 2002, esp pp 2-7.
9 I Taylor, 'The new economics of world football: contradictory aspects of contemporary football',
unpublished paper presented at the FIFA conference, 'Football, National identities and the World Cup',
Paris, 5 July 1998.
10 See 0 Butler, 'Getting the Games: Japan, South Korea and the co-hosted World Cup', in Home &
Manzenreiter, Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup, pp 43-55; and J Sugden & A Tomlinson,
'Intemational power struggles in the govemance of world football: the 2002 and 2006 World Cup bidding
wars', in Home & Manzenreiter, Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup, pp 56-70.
1 The broader background and key social issues involved in the establishment of the Japanese Profes
Football League or 'J League', formed in 1991 but officially launched in 1993, have been the subject
of earlier research by J Home (1996) "'Sakka" in Japan' in Media, Culture and Society, 18(4), 1996,
pp 527-547; J Home (1999) 'Soccer in Japan: is wa all you need?' in Culture, Sport, Society 2(3), pp
212-229; J Home 'Professional football in Japan' in J Hendry and M Raveri (eds) Japan at Play, London:
Routledge, 2001, pp 199-213; and W Manzenreiter 'Japan und der Fussball im Zeitalter der technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit: Die J League zwischen Lokalpolitik und Globalkultur' (Japan and football in the age
of technical reproduction. The J League between local politics and global culture) in M Fanizadeh, G
Hodl and W Manzenreiter (eds). Global Players. Kultur, Okonomie und Politik des Fussballs, Frankfurt/Vi-
enna: Brandes & Apsel/Sudwind, 2002, pp 133-158.
12 See H Schutte & D Ciarlante, Consumer Behaviour in Asia, New York: New York University Press,
13 J Walker, 'Ex-organiser predicts long-term gain for Japan', Asahi Shimbun, 30 November 20
www.asahi.com/english/sports/K2001113000534.html, accessed 30 November 2001.
14 V Chaudhary, 'Golden goals', Guardian, 22 October 1999, p 23.
15 H Nogawa & T Mamiya, 'Building mega-events: critical reflections on the 2002 infrastructure', in Hom
& Manzenreiter, Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup, pp 177-194.
16 Ibid.

17 A Jennings & C Sambrook, The Great Olympic Swindle, London: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
18 See Nogoya & Mamiya, 'Building mega-events'.
19 J Crompton 'Public subsidies to professional team sport facilities in the USA', in C Gratton & I Henry
(eds), Sport in the City, London: Routledge, 2001, pp 15-34.
20 K Schimmel, 'Sport matters: urban regime theory and urban regeneration in the late-capitalist era', in
Gratton & Henry, Sport in the City, pp 259-277.
21 G McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 1996, p 33.
22 McCormack, 'Breaking the iron triangle', pp 11-14.
23 K Kinohara, 'Bellmare looking at more than just soccer', The Japan Times, 29 January 2002, p 21.
24 See J Watts, 'The grand folly', Scotland on Sunday, 25 November 2001; and I Hirose 'Dare g
Warudokappu no 'higaisha' datta no ka' (Who was the victim of the World Cup?), in T Asano & H
Harada (eds), Shoshi kessan Warudokappu. Kaisai shite hajimete wakatte iru kane, seiji, fukumaden,
Tokyo: Takarajima Sha, 2002.
25 Jennings & Sambrook, The Great Olympic Swindle.
26 H Nogawa, 'An intemational comparison of the motivations and experiences of volunteers at the 2002
World Cup', in Manzenreiter & Home, Football goes East, pp 222-242.

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