With the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup enjoying record viewing figures and crowds, there is cause to celebrate in what has often been considered a male-dominated sport.
The Japan team – nicknamed the Sakura Fifteen – won their final group match against Spain and can be satisfied with their progress on the world stage.
Just 40 years ago when the sport was first starting up in Japan, there were only around 400 female rugby players nationwide. Although the sport has grown, stereotypes continue to abound: that women’s rugby players are too muscular, too big – the opposite of the culturally accepted slender woman.
‘When I was playing in Japan there were some people who would ask me “how much body weight did you gain?” or tell me when I retire from rugby, I’ll be skinny,’ says Tamai Kie, former Japanese international player.
‘It’s getting better now, I would say. But I feel like in Japan all women’s sports are sometimes still seen in a sexual way. Sometimes, in the stadium, the male supporters aren’t necessarily there to watch the sport. And there’s the pressure that you need to be cute.’
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When Tamai first picked up a rugby ball at Kansai Gakuin University, she knew nothing about the sport, having grown up playing basketball. With no women’s rugby team, she became the university’s first ever female player, training alongside 125 male players. The response from her teammates? ‘For the first three months no one was talking to me.’
Starting as a complete beginner and facing mild scepticism from her friends that she was only in the team to find a boyfriend, Tamai found her purpose on the pitch. ‘I just ran hard and chased the ball hard until they started talking to me.’
With no real role models of her own, Tamai continued to forge her own path: joining the newly formed team Mie Pearls in 2016, who won four national titles in rugby sevens while she was playing.
International recognition followed: in 2019 Tamai was selected for the Sakura Fifteen. ‘I couldn’t believe it. Singing the anthem before my first match – I’ll never forget that moment,’ she recalls. Tamai would go on to act as game captain for Japan in a test match against South Africa in July 2022 and compete in the Rugby World Cup 2021 (held in 2022 in New Zealand).
A move to Ealing Trailfinders in 2023 introduced Tamai to a new level of competition in women’s rugby. Having been used to predominantly playing rugby sevens in Japan with only a handful of 15-a-side matches per year, she was now playing a test match almost every week of the season.
‘In the UK, the intensity of the games and even the training is like international level. I feel like the players here are the size of a refrigerator or a little truck, running into you with so much speed,’ she says.
Playing alongside teammates who were doctors, dentists and teachers in their professional lives inspired Tamai that there is more to life than rugby. Tamai found her own niche off the pitch: engaging the Japanese community of Ealing (the largest in London).
‘When I started we had zero Japanese fans. I started engaging with the community and brought 250 Japanese people to watch a game in my first season. By my second season, over 500 Japanese people were attending our matches every week.’
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Overcoming the perception in Japan that ‘women athletes are still not recognised as real athletes’ is one of the core aims of Kagawa Akane, Director of Women’s Rugby at the Japan Rugby Football Union.
The physicality of rugby fifteens has often proved a barrier to entry for young women in Japan, but its less intensive variant rugby sevens has led the way in attracting new players. Kagawa managed the national sevens team in the 2016 Olympics, following a six-year programme of over 250 days of training a year. ‘I think that was the first stage of our women’s rugby team to play for the world,’ Kagawa says.
Ahead of the 2025 World Cup, the focus of the Japan Rugby Football Union was to advertise rugby as a safe sport for women and girls. Kagawa says: ‘This year, I can see clearly the change of perception from Japanese people towards women’s rugby players. I think the players feel really confident about their athleticism and the appearance of their bodies.’
With the international exposure at the Olympics and World Cups over the last decade, rugby has increasingly been chosen as a sport for Japan’s high school girls, and the number of female players in Japan is higher than ever. The Japan Rugby Football Union’s aim for the future? ‘To host the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2037.’