The "three big balls" will meet in Paris, why can Japan?

In the Paris Olympics, Japan's men's and women's soccer, basketball, and volleyball teams all qualified, with the men's soccer team, women's soccer team, and men's volleyball team all making it to the Elite Eight. In addition to host France, only the United States of America's "three big ball" six teams all qualified for the Paris Olympics.
Japan's "three big balls" why can have such a balanced and high level of performance? This reporter interviewed several people living in Japan and asked them to talk about the development of Japanese sports and the "three big balls" according to their own perceptions. Among them, Mr. G is a veteran journalist who has been working in the Japanese mainstream media for more than 40 years and is also a soccer enthusiast; Xiao Jinde, an overseas Chinese, has lived in Japan for more than 30 years and has been involved in sports reporting for the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun; and there is also Zhang Ziteng, a 27-year-old Zhang Ziteng, the leader of the Beijing Guoan Japan Fan Club, who came to Japan when he was in junior high school and settled down there until now.
Relying heavily on bottom-up development
Mr. G notes that there are few countries and regions where both the men's and women's teams of the "three big balls" have made it to the Paris Olympics. According to his observation, there is no clear information that the Japan Sports Agency and the Japan Olympic Committee have any special favoring policy for the development of the "three big balls". The Japanese government tends to let each sport develop in a balanced way, and to categorize and implement policies. For example, soccer, basketball, volleyball and other sports associations and civil society has been more mature development, let the association and civil society to do more things.

▲August 2, Japan and Brazil play in the group stage of the basketball event at the Paris Olympics. (FIBA official website)
According to Mr. G, Japan's sports authority is the Sports Agency under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), which is responsible for formulating sports-related policies. Under the Sports Agency is the Japan Sports Promotion Center (JSC), which aims to revitalize sports and improve the level of competition, and it is an independent administrative corporation. The JSC is the main bearer and implementer of the JOC's efforts to develop athletes and coaches for the Olympic Games and World Championships.
For this purpose, the JSC has a comprehensive National Training Center Core Base in Tokyo. This base was built in 2008 and is used by the JASRC and the JOC in a coordinated manner. In addition, national training bases have been established in various locations by program, and there are currently more than 40 of them. Many of these bases are operated by program associations, while others are established by associations and certified by the state, such as the soccer base in Fukushima, which is operated by the Japan Football Association. Currently, there are 15 programs at the core bases, including basketball and volleyball, with training basically starting in the upper elementary school age group.
Mr. G believes that, in general, the main bodies of Japan's sports revitalization include the government, project associations (public interest consortiums), professional clubs, enterprises, schools, and civil society groups including community clubs, etc., and that the role played by the government is not a very heavy one.The budget of the Sports Agency for the year 2024 is about 36 billion yen (about 1.8 billion yuan), which is only the central government budget, excluding local ones, and is a very small part of Japan's sports investment. The Japan Football Association and Japan Baseball Association have their own budgets and are not included in the national budget.
Xiao Jinde said that an important feature of Japanese sports is bottom-up development, grassroots and popularization done well before the government level support.
Emphasis on teamwork and overseas training
Japan in football, basketball, volleyball and other collective ball sports perform well, there are a number of reasons.
First, it is the Japanese character that suits teamwork especially in sports that require multiple people to work together at the same time, and a number of Japanese stars, including Keisuke Honda, have expressed similar views. In Mr. G's opinion, organization and coordination is one of the characteristics of Japanese culture and the essential character of Japanese people. Especially when competing against opponents whose individual abilities and physiques are superior to their own, the Japanese firmly believe that they must rely on teamwork. Soccer, baseball, basketball, and volleyball, unlike gymnastics and table tennis, where individual scores are added up, are particularly characterized by this Japanese trait.

▲August 3, Japan plays against the United States in the women's soccer quarterfinals at the Paris Olympics. (AFP)
Second, a major reason for the steady improvement in the level of Japan's collective ball sports in recent years has been the development of top players to high-level leagues abroad. Excellent Japanese soccer players go to Europe to play, and basketball and volleyball players will go to the U.S., Italy and other places to play, which is a clear trend in the last 10 years, and the driving effect on the programs has been remarkable. Zhang Ziteng believes that in soccer, basketball, volleyball program, encourage players to go overseas to practice is an essential initiative, because in these projects in Europe and the United States training is generally more scientific than the Asian, more advanced, which is the same as in the table tennis project foreign players want to come to China to "practice", improve, is a reason. With stronger opponents than their own fight can certainly learn a lot of experience, but also the fastest way to improve their own, and closed doors can not be accomplished by a qualitative leap.
The third is the development of professional leagues. In Japan, excluding baseball, soccer has the largest population, followed by basketball and volleyball. The popularity of Japanese soccer started when it won the bronze medal at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, and then a major opportunity came with the birth of the J-League in 1993, which led to the real development of Japanese soccer.
For children, the professional league provided a dream stage to the world. Nowadays, a player who is noticed in the professional league in Japan may be favored by overseas professional teams to play and play overseas. On Japanese campuses, students who are very good at a particular sport are valued and envied, and there are many children who are not very academically inclined or who live in small towns. However, if you work hard at your favorite sport, you can shine on the world stage. The examples of Shohei Otani, Konaka Mitaka, Yasutoshi Don, Ken-oh Kubo, and Isao Kawamura have given children a lot to dream about. In this Paris Olympics, the whole Japanese national Olympic soccer team is under 22 years old, and 6 of them are playing for professional teams in Germany, Holland and Belgium.
School sports training system is perfect
The fourth is the prevalence of in-school and after-school sports activities. Zhang Ziteng, who came to Japan to settle down in junior high school, has been fond of sports since he was a child and has a certain basketball foundation. After arriving in Japan, he has participated in training and competitions in junior high school and senior high school varsity teams for more than five years, and has a deeper understanding of school sports in Japan.
In Zhang Ziteng's opinion, the upward trend in the competitive level of Japanese soccer, basketball and volleyball has something to do with the fact that they have a relatively complete training system for school sports. In Japan, there are many coaches at the grassroots level, and the coach of the school team in primary and secondary schools may usually be a teacher of mathematics, history or other subjects, but because they have been involved in school sports since childhood and participate in many adult sports clubs outside of work, they continue to maintain their hobbies in sports, and have the ability to provide basic sports coaching.

▲Japan plays against Italy in the quarterfinals of the men's volleyball at the Paris Olympics on August 5th. (AFP)
Zhang Ziteng told reporters, "The good thing about campus sports is that it ensures that a large number of young talents can stay in the system of sports training. Moreover, school sports in Japan start with no selection and no fees. No one is excluded because they are short or physically weak. Regardless of whether they are tall, short, fat, or skinny, the content of their daily training is the same. Then, with hard work, you can get into the national team's selection process by first establishing yourself on the varsity team and then leading the team step by step to make a name for yourself at all levels of competition."
On-campus after-school sports activities are a major feature of Japanese schooling, and private schools in particular often feature a particular sport as their school's specialty, as is the case with Shonboku High School in Slam Dunk and Nangoku Elementary School in Soccer Bombers. As schools in Japan face competition for students and even survival due to the increase in the number of children and aging, raising the visibility of the school through sports is one way to compete. One starting point for Japan's emphasis on after-school programs in schools is to improve the physical fitness of young people. According to the Sports Agency, "the primary theme of Japan's sports policy is to strive for the health and physical fitness of the nation, especially the youth."
The balanced development of men's and women's sports also contributed to the fact that all six of Japan's men's and women's teams in the three major sports were able to qualify for the Paris Olympics. In Zhang Ziteng's view, "women's sports also have a large audience in Japan, and many girls aspire to participate in sports when they are young and aspire to become athletes.
The fifth is the influence of a good mass base and comics.
In terms of mass base and popularization, Xiao Jinde thinks that Japan's mom volleyball team is a very good example. Softball and moms' volleyball is a 9-player volleyball sport developed after the "Toyo Witch" won the Olympic Games in 1964, and the participants are mainly members of the parents' associations of Japanese elementary and middle schools, which also serves as a platform for communication between schools and parents. Across Japan, the Mom's Volleyball Tournament has a competitive population of 200,000 people and is the main force in popularizing volleyball. The program, in an effort to attract more people in their 50's and 60's, limits teams to two consecutive championships through rule making. Mr. Shaw's wife is a devoted participant in Mom's Volleyball, going to games with her teammates every week. There are quite a few assorted jerseys in his wife's closet.
Volleyball's popularity in Japan goes back even further, with the Japanese women's volleyball team being known as the "Wizards of the East" in the 1960s, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics where the Japanese team beat the world's strongest team at the time, the Soviet Union, and the 1968 manga "Volleyball Woman," which was a big hit, having a big impact. Basketball's popularity in Japan stemmed from the broadcasting of the NBA in the United States, as well as the introduction of Japanese players to the NBA, and the manga Dunkin' Shot, which also had a big impact. Especially noteworthy is that in the three sports of soccer, basketball and volleyball, Japan has become a "legend" of the manga, such as "soccer", "dunking master", "volleyball girls", "volleyball boys". Although the protagonists of Japanese manga are all teenagers, their stories of struggle, anguish, and concern for others are not only loved by teenagers, but also fascinating to many adults.