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Through Japan’s previous seven World Cup appearances, the progress of its men’s national team has reflected the country’s ascent within the global soccer community, a result of three decades of professionalism and grassroots development producing a steady stream of Europe-ready players.
On Thursday, that streak of consecutive appearances in men’s soccer’s showpiece event was officially extended to eight, as Japan’s 2-0 win over Bahrain made them the first non-host country to qualify for the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico.
When the Samurai Blue arrive in North America next year, some names and faces will reflect another, more societal change: A populace that is slowly but steadily becoming more diverse.
Athletes with diverse backgrounds are increasingly common across the Japanese sports landscape, from haafu (Japanese born to one non-Japanese parent) such as four-time grand slam champion Naomi Osaka and NBA star Rui Hachimura to the many naturalized imports who helped the Brave Blossoms reach the quarter-finals of the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Yet while baseball remains Japan’s most popular team sport, it’s on soccer fields across the country, from school pitches to J.League stadia, where the story of the country’s relationship with multiculturalism is most vividly being told.
“Baseball requires significant financial investment in equipment, making it less accessible to children from immigrant backgrounds,” transnational sociology expert Dr Lawrence Yoshitaka Shimoji tells the Guardian. “In contrast, soccer can be played with just a ball, making it a more accessible sport for haafu and immigrant children in Japan.”
There has been at least some level of multicultural influence on Japanese soccer for most of its history. Many of the country’s early player imports hailed from Brazil, home to Japan’s largest diaspora as a result of steady migration in the early 20th century. Nelson Yoshimura, a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian, joined the Japan Soccer League’s Yanmar Diesel (now Cerezo Osaka) in 1967, earning 46 senior caps for Japan after naturalizing in 1970.
Other Brazilian players, including those without Japanese heritage, followed Yoshimura’s path. In addition to a trophy-laden career with the JSL’s Yomiuri SC and its J.League successor Verdy Kawasaki, midfielder Rui Ramos contributed to Japan’s landmark 1992 Asian Cup triumph and nearly led the country to its first World Cup berth a year later.
Wagner Lopes became Japan’s first naturalized World Cup player at France 1998, while Alessandro Santos, scouted as a 16-year-old by Kochi Prefecture’s Meitoku Gijuku High School, wore Japan’s trademark blue shirt for the 2002 and 2006 editions. Four years later, defender Marcus Tulio Tanaka, a third-generation Japanese-Brazilian, helped guide Japan to the last 16 in South Africa.
“The Japanese fans supported the naturalized players exactly like the Japanese-born players as far as I could see,” says veteran soccer writer Michael Plastow. “If there was something special, perhaps it was a sense of gratitude.”
Meanwhile, Japan’s demographics gradually changed. A sustained wave of Brazilian and Peruvian workers in the 1980s and 90s gave way to more immigration from southeast Asia and Africa. Though the country’s birth rate declined by nearly 42% between 1987 and 2022, births to at least one non-Japanese parent rose from 1.3% to 4.1% in that same period.
That figure is reflected by an increase in haafu call-ups over the last decade, with four such players in Japan’s 2024 Olympic squad – three more than at any previous Games – and at least one in each World Cup list since 2014.
In particular, the last two World Cup cycles have seen haafu feature frequently between the goalposts, including Qatar 2022 backup Daniel Schmidt, current Samurai Blue starter Zion Suzuki, and Leo Brian Kokubo, Japan’s keeper at the Paris Games.
These players have flourished in a physically demanding position that Japan has often struggled to develop: the 6ft 3in Suzuki, Kokubo or Taishi Brandon Nozawa, who are both 6ft 4in, could all potentially become the country’s tallest-ever World Cup goalkeeper. But they and their outfield colleagues have grown up in a society that has not always accepted them openly.
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Nearly all respondents in a Japanese nationwide survey of haafu conducted last year by Shimoji and University of Toronto researcher Viveka Ichikawa said they had experienced microaggressions, while 68% had encountered overt bullying and racial discrimination. Almost half said they’d suffered from mental health issues, a rate five times the Japanese national average.
“I’ve experienced the empty seat next to me on the [crowded] train, and when you’re young you wonder, ‘Why?’ But now I can understand,” Jamaican-Japanese forward and Rio 2016 selection Musashi Suzuki told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 2021. “Japanese just aren’t used to seeing people who don’t look like them. As Japan becomes more global, Japanese will have more opportunities to interact with people of other races. I think society is slowly changing.”
Despite those changes, racial abuse aimed at haafu players – particularly those with Black heritage – has also increased on social media. Zion Suzuki, whose father is Ghanaian, publicly urged fans to stop writing discriminatory messages and comments during last year’s Asian Cup in Qatar, where he failed to record a clean sheet in five starts as the Samurai Blue exited in the quarterfinals.
“I’ve received [discriminatory comments] since elementary school, but I won’t give in to them,” Suzuki told Number Web after the tournament. “I could have pretended to ignore [the messages], but I wanted to share my story in the hope that it could help not only soccer players, but athletes and young children with all kinds of roots.”
Though soccer’s status as a global game has increasingly been defined through the lens of immigration – 16.5% of Japanese players in the last World Cup were foreign-born, according to Vox – the increase of haafu in Japan’s squad is instead a story of integration. Among mixed-race players born and raised in Japanese-speaking households, there is no question as to who they’re playing for.
“It’s not the idea that there are many different kinds of people representing [Japan], but rather that once you’re in the national team, you’re the same as everyone else,” says Colombian-Japanese attacker Kein Sato, an Olympic teammate of Kokubo’s and one of three haafu at FC Tokyo who have represented Japan in international competition.
“I think when you wear the Hi no maru [Japanese flag], you’re prepared to fight like hell for Japan whether you’re haafu or pure Japanese, and I think we all feel the same way.”
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