Learn from Japan's Fine Example

2006/5/31 17:29:32

By now, Japan's equal dialogue with the world's strongest football teams has become increasingly commonplace. During last year's Confederations Cup, Japan played Greece into submission, then battled Brazil — after having a good goal wrongly disallowed within the first 3 minutes, they nearly slayed the World Champions. And today, facing Germany — who had humiliated Asian teams by large margins in 2002 — Japan once again defended Asian dignity. Any fair-minded person should applaud the Japanese team.

Everyone knows that when Japan was being beaten senseless by China, they formulated a long-term football development plan. For Chinese people, accustomed to the notion that "plans can't keep up with changes," probably nobody took the Japanese or their plan seriously at the time. The result: over a dozen years later, the plan became reality. The Japanese not only found the right path for development but also achieved results that the Chinese team could not hope to match for quite some time.

"Learn from Japan's fine example" probably makes many people uncomfortable to hear. But opponents and enemies are the first to discover your weaknesses. Opponents and enemies are the best mirrors. A truly mature nation is one that excels at learning from its opponents and enemies. At the very least, this Japanese habit of consistently being able to accomplish very difficult things in a methodical, step-by-step manner is a very good habit, well worth learning from.

Though football is a minor matter, football is the most collective of all sports. Hating the Japanese devils and respecting Japanese football — these two things can perfectly coexist. In just a dozen years, why has Japan — which used to be beaten senseless by China — developed so quickly, while Chinese football grows uglier by the day? These questions are not simply a matter of narrow nationalism.

Everyone knows that table tennis — now China's "national sport" — also started from "learning from Japan's fine example," eventually achieving total surpassing. In that distorted era, they managed to do this, which was probably the most meaningful thing of that era. Surely people today can't be worse than those before them, too narrow-minded for the sake of blind nationalism?