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!
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.
An email out of the blue containing two photos reveals the true start of Yokohama’s first kids rugby school.
BEST YC&AC RUGBY PLAYER IN 1930s Norman Keith Lamport was born 24th March 1907 and was educated at King’s School, Sydney and at Sydney University. His nickname in Australia was not ‘Lampy’ but ‘Butts’. He played rugby for the University and for New South Wales, and was selected to play for the Wallabies in 1929….
Background Only a handful of “open” rugby clubs in the world can trace their history back 150 years. The Yokohama Country and Athletic Club (YC&AC) in the port of Yokohama is one of them as one of four sports clubs which merged in 1884 to form the current multi-sport club was originally established as the…
Background At the end of the 19th century the two leading international trading ports in Japan were Yokohama and Kobe and they were both home to foreign sports clubs, the largest of which were the Yokohama Cricket and Athletic Club (YC&AC) and the Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club. (KR&AC). Not long after the latter was…
EARLY MITSUBISHI vs YC&AC RUGBY MATCH REPORTS The All Mitsubishi Rugby Club was founded in 1928 and claims to be the oldest “club” team in Japan. This is because Japan has a very unique way of classifying and counting its teams and clubs. In fact, its basic unit for counting is ‘teams’ and not ‘clubs.’…
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 ….
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.
HOW I ENJOYED RUGBY WITH THE YC&AC (1979-1986) (Editor’s note: I would like to encourage other old sporting Japan hands to follow Chris’ path and use lockdown to record their memories and send them to me.) By Chris Baker The beginning During February 1979 whilst working for British Leyland as a Senior Instructor at their…
Article written by me for The Japan Times On June 25, 1863, a Royal Navy team drawn from officers on ships sent to protect British expats in Japan had plenty to worry about as the lanky James Campbell Fraser strode out to bat against them on an apology for a cricket pitch in Yokohama. A…
1866 and all that: the untold early history of rugby in Japan Article written by JMG for The Japan Times published in March 2014 before Tokyo International 7s The history of rugby in Japan is arguably longer than that of every major rugby-playing country in the world outside of the British Isles and Australia. Very…
I first became really interested in the early history of rugby in Japan when I offered to write a Japan rugby history-related article for the Japan-side commemorative program to be distributed during the Oxbridge Japan rugby tour of 2009. To research the contents I made my first ever visit to the Yokohama Archives of History…
Keio was the first Japanese team to play overseas and at the time they arrived in Shanghai they still had never lost a rugby match to a Japanese team in Japan. Keio played two matches on the tour – December 26 1925 against Shanghai on and the other against Hong Kong on December 30. Newspaper…
Yokohama Rules adopted by Southend FC in 1870
The content of the article ‘Brief history of rugby in Japan’ which is around 850 words long in the 114 –page RWC 2019 publication being sold at the early RWC games could be judged by some as an insult to Japan’s present and past rugby players and teams. The layout of the Japanese text in…
Days before the eagerly awaited RWC2019 commences, Yokohama City will commemorate the city’s leading role in the start of rugby in Japan and Asia by unveiling a plaque. This article takes a look at the background to this event and why such post-WW2 recognition took almost 75 years. On September 5 there will be a…
The first recorded attendance and study by a Japanese boy at Rugby School is of a boy from Shikoku in Japan who was at the school in 1878 to 1879 means that he was most likely the first Japanese to participate in a football match played according to Rugby School rules. A long serving archivist…
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.
The first recorded playing of an early form of rugby by a Japanese is that of 17-year old KIKUCHI Dairoku (1855 – 1917) while studying at University College School in London. KIKUCHI Dairoku Yasuyuki1 was the second son of Dr. MITSUKURI Shuhei whose family produced a number of leading scholars. In 1866 he was the…
All Japan beat Shanghai 13-6 at Kobe On 30th December 1908 in Kobe, a rugby team named the All Japan team beat Shanghai by 2 goals and 1 try (13 points) to I goal and 1 try (8 points). Here is a rather poorly written description of the play from the Kobe Herald Newspaper: “A….
Only match Hong Kong lost during their 1952 Japan tour excluded from subsequent lists of matches played by touring teams in Japan
BBC Sport recently published this articles following an interview Rugby World Cup: One man’s search into Japan’s mysterious rugby past Reward for 10 years of dedicated study – Mike Galbraith’s labour of love is perhaps now finally at an end Becky Grey – BBC Sport Read the full article on BBC Sport: Mike’s search into…
I was interviewed Thursday the 19th of September by Frank HuisKamp Here are some highlights of the interview in English from the original Source: Schijnwerpers op rugbyland Japan – NRC Frank asked asked me about …. When Japan beat South African double world champion at the World Cup on that magical Saturday in September, exactly…
The ABC interviews Mike Galbraith on Sporty Mike was interviewed last week on Sporty – ABC Radio National – the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Part1. This broadcast discussed ‘When is it too hot to exercise or play sport?’ and is Heat stroke is potentially fatal. …and how do you know when it’s hot enough to stop?…
The YC&AC grounds and sports facilities at Yaguchidai have been enjoyed by the club’s sporting members for just over 100 years and those of no other “open” club in Japan’s major cities come anywhere near matching them. Many members over those years happily played field sports at the YC&AC for ten or even twenty years…
On Saturday April 25 2015, Nepal was struck by a huge 7.8 magnitude earthquake which killed nearly 9,000 people and caused enormous damage and suffering. BHN’s secretariat met on Monday April 27 and decided to send a mission to Nepal to visit the damaged areas, meet with people and organizations and evaluate how BHN might…
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
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.
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 teaching students of Keio Gijuku University how to play the sport in 1899. In December1901 Keio played its first ever game against the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club (YC&AC) on the cricket ground in Yokohama…
Slide presentation on 150 years of rugby in Japan at FCCJ in Tokyo on March 31st 2016 …
CHURCH WAS NOT SO-CALLED EX-PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYER HIRAM CHURCH BUT 18-YEAR OLD ERNEST FISHER CHURCH FROM RHODE ISLAND
SCHOOL’S ALUMNI HELPED INTRODUCE MANY SPORTS IN JAPAN, INCLUDING RUGBY, INITIATED FOUNDING OF KEY YOKOHAMA & KOBE SPORTS CLUBS, & EVEN HELPED WRITE JAPAN’S CONSTITUTION Marlborough College is justly proud of its rugby history and pedigree in the UK. The school played the first inter-school game in 1864 when it played a match against Clifton…
Four simple games of baseball 120 years ago opened way to brilliant future for baseball in Japan.
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.
The evidence that the first baseball club in Japan was not the Shimbashi Athletic Clud allegedly founded by Hiroshi Hiraoka in 1878 but the Yokohama Base Ball Club and not the Shimbashi Athletic Club!
Streamed live on Mar 25, 2015GFI HKFC Tens 2015Day 1 – Game 3#HK10s The post Tradition YCAC vs Shandong Day 1 – Game 3 appeared first on Tokyo Japan Rugby Club.
Playing SquadYoshi Amano, Bill Baker, Masahiko Ikeda, Fumitaka Katakura “The Cherry”, Junji Kikkawa, Michael King, Kats Matsuo, Yoshio Nike, “Caviar Ken“ Noguchi, Masa Nozaki, Hiroyuki Nozawa, Nao Obata, Daisuke Okada, Ryosuke Okawara, Scott Sizemore, Simon Tross Youle (captain), Shunichi Tsushima, Masafumi Uchiyama, Yasufumi Uchiyama The post YCAC Over 35s Tournament – Saturday 21st March appeared…
Report by: Joe FisherResults: Hokkaido Barbarians = Lost 29 – 0 | Sharks = Lost 41 – 21 | Tamariva = Lost (Default) | Komaba WMM = Lost 36 – 22 | Kitagami Blaze Rugger = Won 40 – 27 | Taisei Reds = Won 18 – 17 | RKU Dragons = Lost 76 –…
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