RUGBY ESTABLISHED IN AGE OF SHOGUNS & SAMURAI
Japan’s YC&AC rugby club, founded in the turbulent last days of the ferocious samurai and the Tokugawa shoguns, was the first rugby club established in Asia and is one of the very oldest in the world.
Japan’s YC&AC rugby club, founded in the turbulent last days of the ferocious samurai and the Tokugawa shoguns, was the first rugby club established in Asia and is one of the very oldest in the world.
Article written by me for The Japan Times On June 25, 1863, a Royal Navy team drawn from officers on …
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1866 and all that: the untold early history of rugby in Japan Article written by JMG for The Japan Times …
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I first became really interested in the early history of rugby in Japan when I offered to write a Japan …
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The content of the article ‘Brief history of rugby in Japan’ which is around 850 words long in the 114 …
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I wrote and circulated the information below with Japanese translations to a number of people involved in the rugby world in Japan including at least one director after initially making a complaint to the two Japanese officials on the spot at the Japan Pavilion in London during the RWC 2015 in the UK immediately after reading the information about the history of rugby in Japan that was offered in the display. I didn’t expect to get any response and I didn’t get any.
E. B. studied at the Victoria Public School alongside TANAKA Ginnosuke who helped him to introduce rugby in 1899 to the students of Keio University. At the age of 15 he won nearly all the academic and sporting prizes in the school, except that for mathematics which was awarded to Tanaka, and had several inspirational meetings with the famous writer Lafcadio Hearn while Hearn was a guest in the headmaster’s house.
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All Japan beat Shanghai 13-6 at Kobe On 30th December 1908 in Kobe, a rugby team named the All Japan …
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Only match Hong Kong lost during their 1952 Japan tour excluded from subsequent lists of matches played by touring teams in Japan
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The YC&AC grounds and sports facilities at Yaguchidai have been enjoyed by the club’s sporting members for just over 100 …
On Saturday April 25 2015, Nepal was struck by a huge 7.8 magnitude earthquake which killed nearly 9,000 people and …
CLUB HISTORIAN’S VISIT TO TWO SCOTTISH ‘CASTLES’ IN KINTYRE WHERE TWO KEY FIGURES IN EARLY HISTORY OF SPORT AND YC&AC GREW UP, AND ANOTHER THAT ANOTHER ONE INHERITED
Unlike with the first official games of soccer, rugby, hockey, etc. in Japan., American football started with a big BANG and a big exhibition at the Meiji Shrine grounds on Thanksgiving Day (November 29) in 1934 watched by 15,000 (according to the JAFA* today – the Japan Times at the time said 10,000) people including Prince Chichibu and the American ambassador Joseph Grew who gave a speech as part of the ‘colorful’ opening ceremonies. These included the Florida Dance Hall orchestra playing the football songs of leading US colleges.
When I asked Bill the name of the best player in that period up to world war two, he seemed to hesitate before mentioning several names – Fleming, Archie Scherrer, Devison and Edwards – but when I asked Cecil Arab he quickly said, without any hesitation, ‘Lampy Lamport – the Oxford Blue!’ Years later I decided I should try to find out something about the legendary Lampy Lamport!
GLIMPSES OF YC&AC AND RUGBY IN JAPAN ON AND OFF THE FIELD IN 1920s & 1930s – BILL SALTER’S REMINISCENCES
Canada’s Twilighters played in Japan within weeks of disaster, becoming the first foreign sports team to play in japan after the tohoku earthquake
Over-40’s rugby originated in Japan in the aftermath of the second world war. Its beginnings can be traced back to one evening in October 1947, two years after the end of the war, when Tokyo was still utterly devastated having been reduced to heaps of rubble. Life was a struggle characterized by confusion and disorder.
Rugby involved kids, veterans in close Classic Interport match warmed up things of main match (1st XV Vs the old Japanese enemy Acorn Club), followed by a black-tie VIP-studded dinner with Eddie Jones the main speaker ..
The image is most likely the oldest image of rugby in Asia and one of the very oldest in the world relating to ‘club’ football – at glance at the picture will tell you that the players were certainly not playing a game of soccer – actually being played as opposed to football/rugby played in schools and universities.
However, the conventional history of rugby in Japan, at least since World War II, has been that rugby was introduced to Japan by Cambridge University graduates Ginnosuke Tanaka and Edward Bramwell Clarke who taught Keio students how to play the sport and arranged Keio’s first game against the YC&AC in Yokohama Koen in 1901
Messages mostly from descendants of players and also from living ex-players involved in rugby in Yokohama history – 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1950s to 1980, 1971, 1979, and 1980s
This is the earliest evidence of British army officers and Yokohama civilians playing football regularly in Yokohama, Japan in the mid-1860s
According to most Japanese historians rugby was first introduced to Japan when Ginnosuke TANAKA and Edward B. F. Clarke started …
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Slide presentation on 150 years of rugby in Japan at FCCJ in Tokyo on March 31st 2016 …
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