The prehistory of Japanese student soccer: The football played by two foreign professors at the former Fourth High School, Kanazawa

Abstract

It is said that the history of Association Football in Japan, especially student soccer, began when an Englishman named DeHavilland moved from the Fourth High School in Kanazawa to the Tokyo Higher Normal School in September 1904, where he started coaching soccer. It has been recorded in the history of the Tokyo Higher Normal School soccer club that “some students of the University in Tokyo who said they had been taught football in Kanazawa came to Otsuka with their teacher, and we played a practice match together in December, 1904”.
This article suggests that DeHavilland had also taught soccer in Kanazawa. However, in the history of the Fourth High School soccer club, it is stated that “soccer began in Kanazawa in 1924”, and does not mention DeHavilland. On the basis of this evidence, the history of soccer in Japan states that “this may have not been the case, because of the short stay of DeHavilland and lack of any proof that soccer was played in Kanazawa”.
Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to obtain documentary evidence of DeHavilland and to clarify whether he did, in fact, play soccer in Kanazawa during 1898-1904, based on new documents from the Fourth High School and articles in the school union magazine at that time.
The findings obtained were as follows:
1.  DeHavilland urged students to play football after he started working at the Fourth High School in 1898. His words at the kick-off, which marked the start of student soccer in Japan, were: “It is no matter, hailing, snowing, raining. Come and play!”
2.  It is stated in Hokushinkai magazine that DeHavilland was involved in establishing a football club in 1898. Mention of the football club appeared in the Fourth High School Union rulebook in 1899, and the name DeHavilland appeared in the list of board members of the football club in 1901.
3.  On April 18th, 1901, football was played for 30 minutes at the Fourth High School as one of the sports at the sports festival.
4.  On October 5th, 1902, at the ceremony to mark the opening of the “football club” at Ishikawa prefectural Second Junior High School, DeHavilland and Wohlfarth both played goalkeeper.
This evidence of the involvement of DeHavilland and Wohlfarth in soccer at the Fourth High School and in Kanazawa should be regarded as one of the hidden roots of student soccer in Japan.