Japan's rise to a global footballing power

Anyone who visited the Football Museum in Tokyo in the last ten years would have seen two things above all: the hands of German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, who became a darling of the Japanese public at the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, and all the fair play awards that Japanese national teams regularly win.

But something has changed in the last two or three years: Japanese players are now not only technically skilled, hardworking, and fair, but also "nasty," subtly unfair, and shrewd. In the major European leagues, they no longer play just as workhorses, but as destroyer-playmakers (Endo, Fujita), magicians (Kubo, Doan), sprinters (Mitoma, Suzuki, Ito), and defensive stalwarts (Itakura). With Werder Bremen's goalkeeper Backhaus, who is also eligible to play for Japan, they might finally have a truly good keeper on the team. They now possess the other missing piece of the puzzle: the courage to commit fouls.

In this talk about the footballing nation of Japan, Felix Lill aim to explain why Japan's two consecutive victories over Germany were no fluke, what's working well in the country, how it became an exporter of talent, how fouling is practiced, and why they now have legitimate hopes of finally becoming a top team at the next World Cup. Felix Lill have been in contact with, among others, Michael Skibbe (who is coaching Kobe), player agents, analysts, and fans.

Felix Lill  is a journalist and author based in Tokyo and Berlin.

This lecture is one of four in the spring of 2026.

February 20th   Japan’s evolving role in Asia's security  

March 26th      Japan's rise to a global footballing power  

April 23rd          Challenges in Rural Japan’s Elderly Care System 

May 28th           Japan and the Democratic Challenges of an Aging Society  

The lectures are in english.

This event is part of a lecture series on Japan organized by Japan Studies within the Global Studies program, in collaboration with Dokk1 and with generous support from the Sasakawa Foundation.