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At last, the World Cup

サッカーW杯開幕

Maybe it is because it rolls around just once every four years. Maybe it is because it is played by more people, in more countries, than any other sport. Maybe it is because it promises, and usually delivers, moments of magnificent drama --all the more stirring for the long stretches of tedium before and after. But whatever the reason, the World Cup final, the culmination of the quadrennial soccer championship that kicks off for the 17th time today in Seoul, is the planet's most-watched sporting event by far. An astounding 2 billion people, it is reported, saw Mr. Zinedine Zidane dash the hopes of 170 million Brazilians in the last one, in France, in 1998.

The World Cup is so popular that it constitutes a kind of parallel mental universe, where the everyday rules of rational behavior do not apply. In Ireland, fans actually petitioned the government to switch the country to Japanese time for the duration of this year's championship. In Senegal, schools will close on May 31, June 6 and June 11, when the 42nd-ranked Lions of Teranga play France, Denmark and Uruguay. Even soccer-resistant America has fans, albeit mostly immigrants: An Italian resident of Washington says that during the last World Cup his boss thought he was seeing a psychiatrist because he scheduled his summer vacation in three-hour blocks.

The World Cup bends the realities of politics, too. On one level, it is true, football mania begins and ends in rabid nationalism. That's half the fun of it. But on another level, it breeds a striking sense of commonality, the prerequisite of detente. After all, it is hard to feel completely estranged from anyone who shares one's passion for watching a bunch of grown men chase, kick and head-butt a big ball into a net. For one month, as the 64 World Cup matches dwindle toward the last faceoff in Yokohama at the end of June, it will be a bit like Christmas Day in the trenches of World War I: hostilities temporarily suspended, guns laid down. For a brief moment, the so-called World Cup community supersedes even local loyalties. And that, of course, is the other half of the fun.

The thawing effect is particularly evident this year in Asia, where Japan and South Korea find ourselves in the delicate situation of cohosting the show. Certainly, there have been bumps along the road thus far, and rivalry is intense. The two countries will not play each other, but neither team pretends it doesn't care about advancing further in the competition than the other. At the same time, though, the enforced cooperation has generated what looks like genuine warmth. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has exchanged football shirts and good wishes with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, an unpopular figure in Mr. Kim's country last year. And the prime minister will be joined at today's opening ceremony in Seoul by Prince Takamado and Princess Hisako, the first members of the Imperial family to visit South Korea since World War II.

Similarly, the shadow that had fallen over relations between North and South Korea has lifted somewhat ahead of today's kickoff. As South Korean presidential adviser Mr. Lim Dong Won said bluntly a few weeks ago, "We can't host the World Cup without peace on the Korean Peninsula." There are naturally no guarantees that the fragile "football truce" between Tokyo, Seoul and Pyongyang will last beyond June 30, but it surely augurs well that it has occurred at all. It is in everyone's interests that the momentum of cooperation, however reluctantly achieved, be sustained and extended.

In the meantime, it is obviously of the greatest importance that this jointly hosted World Cup be perceived as a success. Everything from traffic to the weather is a factor in that, and not all of them are controllable. But easily the two biggest issues are hospitality and security. It is unfortunate that some people in this country — perhaps influenced by media stories about hooliganism — seem to think that hospitality and security are incompatible ideals, that the fear of misbehavior by foreign fans is somehow making foreigners in general, both residents and visitors, feel unwelcome. The Japanese police, for instance, have been criticized as inhospitable, even xenophobic, for "watching videos of the Hillsborough disaster" in which 95 British football fans were crushed to death at a game in 1989.

This is nonsense. The police should be watching videos of Hillsborough — as well as of incidents of fan violence in Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere. Hooliganism is a real issue, and hospitality is not undercut by security designed to prevent it: It depends on it.

On that note, therefore, let us hope that at the 2002 World Cup everyone will feel both safe and welcome, that the sun will shine, the traffic will flow . . . and even, since we are talking about miracles, that Japan will win.

4年に1度開かれる世界最大の単一スポーツの祭典、サッカー・ワールドカップでは、大会の間の長い退屈があるからこそ、鮮やかなドラマの興奮がいっそう高まる。日韓共催の第17回ワールドカップ決勝リーグは31日、韓国のソウルで開幕を迎えた。

サッカーファンには国を超えた共通性がある。アイルランドのファンは大会開催中、現地時間を日本時間に合わせるよう、政府に陳情したという。セネガルでは、自国チームの予選試合日に学校が休校になる。

ワールドカップは政治の現実を変える力を持つ。サッカーへの熱狂は過激な国粋主義に終始する側面もあるが、同時に、仲間意識を生む。選手がボールを追いかけ、蹴り、ゴールを狙うのを見守る時の情熱を分かち合える人には親近感を感じずにはいられない。この1か月間は第一次大戦中のクリスマスのようなもので、戦争行為は停止され、状況によっては愛国心も忘れられることがある。こうした雪解け効果が日本と韓国の関係に表れている。

両国間の障害と競争意識を乗り越えて協力体制が強化され、本物の友好関係が生まれたようだ。また、北朝鮮と韓国の関係にも明るさが見えてきた。

ワールドカップの成功に向けて取り組むべき最大の課題は歓待の気持ちと警備だ。フーリガンに関する報道の影響か、この二つが両立しないと考える日本人がいること、ファンの乱暴に対する恐怖感が、外国人を歓迎していない印象を与えていることは残念だ。日本の警察官は英国のサッカーファンが多数死亡した事件のビデオを研究しており、外国人嫌いの態度が批判されているが、英国のビデオも世界各国のファンによる暴力行為のビデオも見るべきだ。フーリガンは現実の問題だが、警備の強化によって歓待の気持ちが薄れることはないだろう。