About 蹴球 Shukyu

It began with a simple question: how many goals did Kunishige Kamamoto actually score for Japan?

Kamamoto is Japan's all-time leading scorer — a striker who won bronze at the 1968 Olympics in defeating Mexico in front of a reported 105,000 crowd, and became a legend of Japanese football. But the answer to that question turned out to be surprisingly hard to find, depending entirely on which matches you counted as official internationals and which you didn't. Different sources gave different answers. Some included pre-war matches, others didn't. Some counted Olympic matches, others excluded them.

That question became a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet became a database. The database became Shukyu.

蹴球 — pronounced Shukyu — is the original Japanese word for football, literally meaning "kick ball." It was the JFA's own name until 1974, when the 日本蹴球協会 (Japan Football Association, Shukyu) became the 日本サッカー協会 (Japan Football Association, Soccer) — switching from the classical Chinese-derived term to the phonetic transliteration of the English word.

The name connects the project to both the history of the game in Japan and to Kemari (蹴鞠), the ancient Kyoto court game played since the 7th century — a direct ancestor of the concept, if not the sport.

The crow emblem is the Yatagarasu (八咫烏) — the three-legged crow of Japanese mythology that has served as the symbol of the Japan Football Association since 1931.

Shukyu documents every match played by the Japan men's national football team from 1917 to the present — more than 1,000 matches in total, covering 109 years of football history.

For each match we record the score, scorers, venue, attendance, referee, both managers, and the full squad (starters, substitutes and bench). Where matches went to extra time or penalties, we record those results and individual penalty takers. Video highlights are linked where available.

Player records cover career appearances and goals, with names displayed in both English and Japanese throughout.

Not all of Japan's matches are FIFA A internationals — the official designation for full international matches between senior national teams. Of the total, 791 are classified as official A internationals. The remaining 506 are non-official matches of various kinds.

Non-official matches include: Olympic matches, matches against club sides, matches against regional or provincial selections, wartime matches against occupied territories, and charity or exhibition matches.

Shukyu includes all of them, clearly labelled. The non-official matches are often historically the most interesting — they document Japan's engagement with the wider world of football long before the national team achieved its modern prominence.

Japan's fixture list is as much a record of 20th-century geopolitics as it is of football. There are wartime matches against Manchuria and Mengjiang. Post-war tours of West Germany, playing regional amateur sides and Bundesliga clubs. Trips behind the Iron Curtain to face Soviet club sides — Torpedo Moscow, CSKA Moscow, Spartak Moscow, Pakhtakor of Tashkent, Ararat Yerevan. Matches against teams that no longer exist: the Dutch East Indies, South Vietnam, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, the Khmer Republic.

There are tours of Britain — Arsenal in 1968, Tottenham, Coventry, Southampton, Middlesbrough, Everton, Hull City, Grimsby Town. There are matches against North Korean club teams. There are 11 matches against the Middlesex Wanderers.

The sequence of matches against "Korea" becoming "South Korea" and then, separately, "North Korea" tells you much about 1945 and what followed.

Shukyu is a living project. Planned additions include: exact substitution timings; biographical data for players including birthplace and club career history; additional penalty shootout records; and the women's national team — Nadeshiko Japan — on the same platform.

The long-term ambition is to make Shukyu the most complete and accessible English-language record of Japanese international football history.

Shukyu was built by David Phillips, a communications professional with a background spanning football, media and sports business. His MBA thesis was a work-based consultancy project for the J.League, and he has worked in communications and consultancy roles with UEFA, FIFA, ELEVEN Sports, NEO Studios, and sports technology companies. The project grew from a personal interest in football history and a frustration with the lack of authoritative English-language records for Japanese football.

If you spot an error, have additional historical information, or just want to get in touch, please email hello@japanfootballdb.com. Corrections are always welcomed and credited.