The purpose In the Japanese archipelago, the women’s national team is better known than the men’s team. World champions in 2011, finalists at the London Olympics in 2012, the Japanese women’s footballers were eliminated by the United States in the quarter-finals in Paris. The men, for their part, have spread all over the planet: Junya Ito at the Stade de Reims; Take Kubo at Real Sociedad, in the Basque Country… “There are more than a hundred Japanese in the major championships,” explains Shûichi Tamura, the only Japanese journalist with the right to vote for the Ballon d’Or, interviewed in the August issue of “France Football”, the supplement to “L’Equipe” which appears every second Saturday of the month.
The interest This summer edition invites us to a hollow portrait of Japanese society. The archipelago, which was occupied by the United States from 1945 to 1952, remains very marked by American culture and gives little space to European football. However, “Blue Lock”, a story of budding strikers, is the most popular manga with 40 million copies sold in 2023. On the other hand, Japan, which had reigned over football video games with, in particular, PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) from 1990 to 2010, has disappeared from consoles.
