Chants and headbands aren’t the only tradition supporters of Japan’s sports teams bring with them when attending events overseas.

The World Cup is underway, and while Japan always gets excited when it has a team or players in an international sports contest, it doesn’t seem like the hype is quite as palpable this time around. Part of that might be due to the Japanese men’s team not looking quite as competitive as they did a few tournaments ago, and the booming popularity of baseball in Japan these days, fueled by superstars like Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto shining in the U.S. Major Leagues, is also sucking up a lot of the public’s attention.

That’s not to say that people in Japan aren’t hyped about the World Cup, just that they seem a little less hyped this time around. Something that hasn’t changed, though, is the sterling manners of Japanese fans when attending games at the stadium.

In what’s become a tradition for supporters of the Samurai Blue (as Japan’s men’s soccer team is nicknamed), following the end of Japan’s opening match 2-2 draw against the Netherlands at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, a number of Japanese fans stuck around to make sure that the section of the stands they’d been watching from was at least as clean as it had been when they’d arrived, including one man in a wheelchair.

This kind of behavior has caught the admiring attention of the international sports community at previous World Cups and other international competitions in which Japanese athletes have taken part, and at which large numbers of Japanese fans have been in attendance. Parallels are often drawn to how Japanese students are responsible for cleaning their own schools, and as alluded to by the woman in the video below, the idea of leaving your part of the stadium a dirty mess would be considered disrespectful not only to fellow spectators, but to the players, the stadium, and the game itself.

It’s worth pointing out that while fans at domestic sports games in Japan also tend to leave the stadium in a much, much cleaner state than their counterparts in many other countries, this custom of actively cleaning up the bleachers is something that’s generally only done when Japanese fans go overseas to watch their nation’s athletes compete. The underlying logic is that just as the players on the field or court are representatives of their home country, so too are Japanese fans. Especially if several of them are together in a block of seats, they realize that their nationality is going to be especially visible, and want to avoid leaving any sort of bad impression.

The importance of hospitality in Japanese culture has become world-famous, but it goes beyond just an awareness of what hosts can do to make guests more comfortable, but also what guests should do to show appreciation to their hosts. As an example of that, Japan’s sports teams have also earned a reputation for leaving the locker rooms they temporarily occupy in pristine condition, which the men’s soccer squad did once again at AT&T Stadium.

▼ In keeping with the “be a good guest” ideal, grouping all of your trash together like this is considered good manners when staying in Japanese hotels too.

Japan’s next match, against Tunisia, is scheduled for June 20 (local time) at Estadio BBVA in Guadalupe, Mexico, and while no one yet knows what we’ll see happen on the field, it’s easy to imagine how the Japanese fans’ section of the stadium will look.

Source: Twitter/@WorldCupMedia_
Top image: Pakutaso
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