The shift to the championship system won the hearts and minds of rugby fans and the international performance of the Japan National Rugby Union Team also was spotlighted. Japanese rugby then reached an unprecedented prosperous period. In this period, many rugby fans queued up and stayed overnight in the Jingu-no-mori Forest to buy same-day tickets. In the Japan Rugby Championship, university teams crossed swords fairly and squarely with company teams. Their thrilling performance also greatly impressed and inspired a lot of rugby fans.
Rugby got a lot of media exposure during this period, while it provided huge business opportunities to boost rugby popularity even further. But persisting in the amateur spirit even in this situation might have worked negatively.
In the later years, Japanese rugby suffered from a decline in popularity again affected by professionalization of football (soccer) when the J-League was successfully inaugurated. In the face of reality that Japanese rugby also needs to be open to professional players for strengthening, dissemination, and development of the sport, I must be responsible for causing a delay in modernizing Japanese rugby. With Waseda's extraordinary run claiming 60 straight titles in the Kanto university rugby tournaments, university rugby reached the height of its prosperity.
Rugby got a lot of media exposure during this period, while it provided huge business opportunities to boost rugby popularity even further. But persisting in the amateur spirit even in this situation might have worked negatively.
In the later years, Japanese rugby suffered from a decline in popularity again affected by professionalization of football (soccer) when the J-League was successfully inaugurated. In the face of reality that Japanese rugby also needs to be open to professional players for strengthening, dissemination, and development of the sport, I must be responsible for causing a delay in modernizing Japanese rugby. With Waseda's extraordinary run claiming 60 straight titles in the Kanto university rugby tournaments, university rugby reached the height of its prosperity.