Mike Galbraith

1974 YC&AC RUGBY ON CLUB’S FIRST POST-WAR OVERSEAS SPORT TOUR

by

1974 YC&AC KOREA RUGBY TOUR – CLUB’S FIRST POST WAR OVERSEAS SPORTS

1981 YC&AC RUGBY TOUR TO KOREA

by

The 1981 YC&AC rugby tour to Seoul for notable for a combined team of the best of the YC&AC and the best of Seould Survivors RFC, playing in Survivors’ shirts, being beaten 115 – 0. At present this article only consists of a few photos!

1974 YC&AC Rugby Tour to Korea

by

In 1974 the YC&AC rugby section went on tour to Seoul and played to matches. This appears to be the first overseas tour made by any YC&AC sports team and is one of the first rugby tour to Korea by any team. Alex Russell allowed me to copy his rugby photos displayed before he left Japan. The text is from the YC&AC magazine.

YC&AC WELCOMES NEW RUGBY PLAYERS

by

Play rugby in Japan. If you are looking for a great rugby club, check out the YC&AC whose rugby team’s establishment preceded that of the the RFU by five years. The club is one of the very few clubs in Japan to have its own ground on a hill with a great view of Mt. Fuji and has a special sports bar for after-match receptions yards from the pitch ….

1972 Interport Rugby in Japan

by

The annual rugby interport match played between Yokohama (YC&AC) and Kobe (KR&AC) started on Xmas day 1902 and was Japan’s longest running rugby fixture. Kobe hasn’t been able to field a team for more than 10 years. Here is a report on the 1972 match that was published in the club’s monthly in-house magazine and forwarded to me by John Quin, who played for the YC&AC that day.

CRITIQUE OF TWO ENGLISH LANGUAGE EXHIBITS EXPLAINING JAPAN’S RUGBY HISTORY IN JAPAN PAVILION IN LONDON DURING RWC2015: PART 1

by

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.

SPOTLIGHT ON E. B. CLARKE – ONE FATHER OF RUGBY IN JAPAN

by

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.

FUWAKU – WORLD’S FIRST SENIOR RUGBY CLUB

by

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.

HOW THE EARLY HISTORY OF RUGBY IN JAPAN WAS “LOST”

by

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

VIDEO OF FCCJ PRESENTATION ON HISTORY OF RUGBY IN JAPAN & RECENT PODCAST

by
  1. Slide presentation on 150 years of rugby in Japan at FCCJ in Tokyo  on March 31st 2016                                                                                                       The video on the FCCJ website is nearly one and half hours long including almost five minutes of filming before the press conference actually starts so here is quick guide to the starting point of the key parts: a. Official start of the press conference – 4 mins 27 secs; b. Kazumi Ohigashi speech – 7 mins 3  secs; Nobuyuki Ueyama speech – 15 mins 58  secs; Mike Galbraith speech – 20  mins 48  secs; Questions – 57 mins 45 sec.
  2. Interview about rugby history in Japan in audio podcast called JRugby Podcast (Lee Watkins & Taito Sakurai) in early September 2016                 The interview starts at the 16 mins 32 secs mark

A version of the publicity prepared by the FCCJ for the press conference  and slightly modified by me before the event and again after the event 

Japan’s 2015 World Cup shock 34-32 victory over mighty South Africa catapulted the national team into the limelight, giving the 2019 Rugby World Cup host badly needed momentum to pull their sport out of near obscurity on their own home ground. Heralded around the world as the biggest upset in World Cup history, television ratings in Japan soared overnight from single digit to record breaking heights unimaginable in recent years, while the world clamours to learn about the nation’s rugby and rugby team which had previously only ever won one World Cup match.

Unbeknownst to the world of rugby in general, rugby in Japan has a long and rich history dating back to the age of Shoguns and samurai, The country is, for example, home to the oldest rugby club in Asia – the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club (YC&AC), which held a special 150th commemorative rugby festival and dinner on April 2 2016. No club in either New Zealand, home of the legendary All Blacks, or Wales, another home of rugby, has reached the 150 mark yet.

This history is known and recognised by, for example, the World Rugby Museum in London, but Japan is only just starting to change its view that rugby started in Japan in 1899.

fccjpron150yearsofrugbypressie