Competition
Unlike many countries, the Japanese national football team does not wear colors that match the nation's flag – what's the reason behind this?
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Brazil sports yellow and green, England dons white, France and the USA wear red, white and blue... so why doesn't Japan use red and/or white as the primary color in their home uniform?
Japan has been a constant fixture at the World Cup since their initial qualification in 1998, and they are a major force in women's soccer after reaching consecutive World Cup finals in 2011 and 2015, securing victory in the first.
Yet they have accomplished all of this in blue home jerseys – and the reason behind this involves debunking a couple of myths in favor of more straightforward explanations.
Japan's use of blue is probably not connected to samurai
Japan is known as the Samurai Buru (Blue), and there is some kit folklore suggesting blue was selected as a direct tribute to their renowned pre-industrial warriors.
Journalist and avid kit historian Joey D'Urso believes this is nonsense, however, stating that this claim is a piece of 20-year-old marketing hype that has been taken far too seriously over the last two decades.
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The more likely explanation: Japan first wore blue all the way back in 1930, and it has been suggested that their team was apparently composed of players from Tokyo Imperial University... whose kit was light blue.
It would be somewhat similar to if the England national team had originally been a side made up of players from Oxford or Cambridge who wore their traditional athletic blue.
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However, the Japanese FA cannot fully confirm this, helpfully stating: "We're not sure what the exact reason was."
Blue hasn't been a constant throughout Japan's entire history, though. They actually wore white with blue trim in the 1980s, and they did match the flag by wearing red and white between 1988 and 1992.
But Japan fell short of qualifying for the 1990 World Cup and the 1992 Olympics while wearing that red and white kit, prompting them to abandon the idea and return to blue, as Amy Winehouse didn't sing.
It also didn't hurt that two of Japan's regional rivals, China and South Korea, both wear red kits.
This helps their blue kit stand out a bit more in continental competition and gave them some useful distinctive branding at a time when that was starting to become fairly important.
Steven Chicken has been working as a football writer since 2009, with stints at Football365 and the Huddersfield Examiner. Steven still covers Huddersfield Town home and away for his own publication, WeAreTerriers.com . Steven is a two-time nominee for Regional Journalist of the Year at the prestigious British Sports Journalism Awards, making the shortlist in 2020 and 2023.
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