Rising Sons

Monday, Jun. 17, 2002 By TIM LARIMER/OSAKA

Cherubic Killer: Junichi Inamoto looks like a Pokemon but scores like Pac-Man

DAVID GUTTENFELDER/AP

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Let's say you've just regained consciousness after a 20-year nap. You fell asleep on the couch in 1982, and when you wake up, guess what's still on TV? The World Cup, of course. At first you pay little attention to the teams on the screen until you notice that the players wearing the royal blue jerseys are somehow different. This guy with a candy-apple red Mohawk darts into view, launching his lanky frame at the ball like a madman. In the center of the defense is a buzzing human gnat wearing the black-leather face mask of a professional wrestler. The team captain is a silky assassin who snakes passes with the style and misdirection of 007. His wingman is a shaved-headed, ball-dribbling maestro. Up front: two bleach blond surfer dudes, one of them with the most pinchable cheeks since the Gerber baby.

And, man, how this side can play, so effervescent and joyous and tireless. Then you read the names on the backs of the jerseys. Reality check. All that sleep must have dulled your brain cells. These guys are Japanese. You're not one to stereotype, but the last time you checked, Japan was a land of pachinko-playing automatons, dull conformists who wear uniforms to work and school, and who never, ever jaywalk. When did they start having fun? When did they all become blond?

This World Cup has been full of surprises, but none more startling than the ascendance of Team Japan. It isn't just that the unfancied squad won its group�going undefeated against Russia, Belgium and Tunisia�thereby qualifying for the knockout stage of the tournament for the first time. It's the way they've succeeded, with an aggressive Day-Glo style that has commanded the spotlight at the world's premier sporting event, instantly lifting a dispirited nation. "Winning these games, the team gives us Japanese the power to be brave," says 18-year-old college student Hiroki Sakaue as he waits outside Osaka's Nagai Stadium for a glimpse of his new heroes. Says his friend Hiromi Kaya: "They give us hope."

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While their inspirational performance at this World Cup might seem like a bolt from the blue, Japan's football skills have been under development for a decade. Much of the credit for this year's breakthrough inevitably goes to their fire-breathing dragon of a coach, Philippe Troussier. The French import, known for gesticulating wildly on the sidelines while his interpreter perfectly mimics his antics, once taunted his players for being pampered babies whose play lacked passion. This is no longer an issue. "Their midfield play is superb," says Leonardo, the Brazilian giant from the 1994 winning World Cup team, who also played professionally in Japan. "But the real surprise, for me, is the quality of their defending. They are throwing themselves at the ball, refusing to be intimidated by the size of the opposing forwards."

In addition to bringing in foreigners to raise the intensity level, Japan has tried other team-building tactics, including employing a psychologist, Kazushige Toyoda, for the youth team. Toyoda specializes in the practice of qi, which supposedly unleashes the body's inner powers. Among those he trained was the national team's striker, the bleach blond, baby-faced Junichi Inamoto�the talk of Japan last week after he scored the winning goal in Japan's 1-0 victory over Russia and contributed another in a 2-2 draw with Belgium. In early qi sessions, Inamoto "was a little shy, a little modest and somewhat negative," says Toyoda, who also counsels Japanese baseball sensation Ichiro Suzuki. "But after some mental training, he became more extroverted. Now he has learned a sixth sense to detect where the ball is quickly and to act quickly."

The same can be said of the entire squad. Japan plays extroverted football, displaying not just rigid discipline but poetry, creativity and opportunism. "They do what they want to do quite freely," says Yasuhiko Okudera, Japan's first great soccer player who made his mark in the German Bundesliga in the 1970s. Now 50, Okudera is naturally thrilled for Japan, though he's not quite sure what to make of the Cup team personalities. "One of my German friends asked me, 'Why do they dye their hair like that?' I didn't know what to tell him," Okudera says. "I don't really understand it myself, but they often say they are happy as long as they can have fun."

These punk rockers of the soccer pitch are deceptively dangerous. The player with the Mohawk, Kazuyuki Toda, is a defensive pest, perpetually in the faces of opponents. "My job is to do the dirty work," he says. Co-defender Tsuneyasu Miyamoto is so hyperkinetic it's a wonder he hasn't broken more than his nose, which was injured during a practice game and now requires the protection of a leather mask. On offense, Shinji Ono supplies the fancy footwork and sets up the pair of fair-haired attackers�Inamoto and the slightly disheveled beach bum of the two, Takayuki Suzuki.

Then there's the suave Hidetoshi Nakata, who plays in Italy's Serie A league. Other Japanese players have gained overseas exposure, and that seasoning is a factor in their Cup success. But Nakata is the team's reigning International Man of Mystery. He carries himself as coolly as a Milan runway model and betrays barely an emotion, even after scoring a goal as he did against Tunisia on Friday when his header deflected off the goalkeeper's shoe and trickled into the net. His outward calm hides an inner fire. "I desperately wanted to score a goal," says Nakata. "We have a mission to show the rest of the world how good Japanese soccer really is."

But Inamoto is the action hero who at the moment resonates most deeply with fans. The Japanese nation has been unable to rev up its faltering economy, and likewise Inamoto has struggled recently. Signed last year in a high-profile deal by Arsenal in England's Premiership, the 22-year-old midfielder saw little action and suffered the ignominy of relegation to the club's reserves. He reportedly has been released by Arsenal. His redemption, then, was sweet (especially because Arsenal's coach, Arsene Wenger, was in the stands watching) as he scored Japan's first World Cup goal, against Belgium. "Yes, yes, say that, I was hungry," he gloats, grinning broadly.

His country is beaming with him. Throughout the finals, Japanese stadiums have been packed with raucous fans dressed in the royal blue of Japan's team, rocking arenas with a seismic jolt of uncharacteristically exuberant support for the home side. Thousands of delirious Japanese poured onto the streets of Osaka on Friday night after the 2-0 victory over Tunisia. They climbed lampposts, darted in and out of traffic and leaped off car roofs. About 100 people, including salarymen, teenagers, and one buck-naked man with a Japanese flag tied around his neck like a cape, jumped into the green, murky waters of the Dotombori River. "Banzai!" the caped crusader yelled.

The uninhibited celebration caught authorities off guard. Thousands of extra police were mobilized to prepare for the expected raping and pillaging by English hooligans, but officials sheepishly admitted last week they had failed to imagine that their own fans might be a bigger problem. Maybe they didn't anticipate a local uprising because they didn't expect Japan to win. Few people did.

Of course, the rapture could soon end. Japan is scheduled to play Turkey next�in the sudden death portion of the competition. But the country has already felt the frisson that goes with World Cup success, and the thrill�the long-awaited taste of glory�has invigorated a slumbering nation. "With their fighting spirit," says college student Sakaue, "we all can win again."