The introduction of football in Japan is officially credited by the Japan Football Association, and numerous academic papers and books on the history of association football in Japan, to then Lieutenant-Commander
Archibald Lucius Douglas of the Royal Navy and his subordinates, who from 1873 taught the game and its rules to Japanese navy cadets while acting as instructors at the
Imperial Japanese Navy Academy in Tsukiji, Tokyo. The first official football match in Japan is widely believed to have been held on February 18, 1888, between the
Yokohama Country & Athletic Club and
Kobe Regatta & Athletic Club. YC&AC is the oldest running association football club in Japan as Association Football was introduced into the club on December 25, 1886, for training sessions starting from January 1887. The first Japanese association football club, founded as a football club, is considered to be
Tokyo Shukyu-dan, founded in 1917, which is now competing in the Tokyo Prefectural amateur league. In the 1920s, football associations were organised and regional tournaments began in universities and high schools especially in Tokyo. In 1930, the
Japan national association football team was organised and had a 3–3 tie with
China for their first title at the
Far Eastern Championship Games. The Japan national team also participated in the
1936 Berlin Olympic Games, the team had the first victory in an Olympic game with a 3–2 win over powerful
Sweden. Aside from the national cup, the
Emperor's Cup established in 1921, there had been several attempts at creating a senior-level national championship. The first was the All Japan Works Football Championship (AJWFC), established in 1948 and open only to company teams. The second was the All Japan Inter-City Football Championship (AJICFC), established in 1955 and separating clubs by cities (any club, works, university or autonomous, could represent their home city and qualify) but the Emperor's Cup remained dominated by universities until the late 1950s. All these tournaments were cups following
single-elimination formulas, similar to
Serie A in Italy before 1929. The first organized national league, the
Japan Soccer League, was organized in 1965 with eight amateur company clubs and replaced the AJWFC and AJICFC. At the
1968 Mexico Olympic Games, the Japan national team, filled with the top JSL stars of the era, had its first big success winning third place and a bronze medal. Olympic success spurred the creation of a Second Division for the JSL and openings for the first few professional players, in the beginning, foreigners (mainly Brazilians), and a few from other countries, which also led to the country hosting its first international competition, the
1979 FIFA World Youth Championship. Japanese players, however, remained an amateur, having to work day jobs for the companies owning the clubs (or other companies if their clubs were autonomous). This limited the growth of the Japanese game, and many better Japanese players had to move abroad to make a living off the game, such as
Yasuhiko Okudera, the first Japanese player to play in a professional European club, (
1. FC Köln of Germany).
UEFA and
CONMEBOL aided the Japanese awareness of football by having the
Intercontinental Cup played in Tokyo as a neutral venue. in Russia In 1993, the
Japan Professional Football League (commonly known as the
J.League) was formed replacing the semi-professional Japan Soccer League as the new top-level club competition in Japan. It consisted of some of the top clubs from the old JSL, fully professionalized, renamed to fit communities and with the corporate identity reduced to a minimum. The new higher-standard league attracted many more spectators and helped the sport to hugely increase in popularity. The professionalized league also offered, and offers, incentives for amateur non-company clubs to become part of their ranks with no major backing from a company; major examples of community, non-company-affiliated clubs who rose through the
prefectural and regional ranks into the major leagues are
Albirex Niigata and
Oita Trinita. Japan participated in its first-ever World Cup tournament at the
1998 FIFA World Cup held in France. In 2002, Japan co-hosted the
2002 FIFA World Cup with
Republic of Korea. After this, the association football communities of both countries received the
FIFA Fair Play Award. The Japanese national team has reached the round of 16 on four occasions – as hosts in 2002, where they were knocked out by Turkey 1–0, in 2010, where they lost to Paraguay in penalties, in
2018 where they fell 2–3 to Belgium, and in the
2022 FIFA World Cup. Japan also qualified for the
2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, the
2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the
2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. ==Football in fiction==