Beware the Soccer Hooligans

Schools plan to close, families will keep their children indoors, and barbers are considering lockdowns so their scissors don’t become deadly weapons.

The prospect of thousands of large, loud, drunk, foreign, out-of-control soccer rowdies invading this peaceful country at the end of the month for the World Cup has Japanese bolting their doors and bracing for the worst.

“I have no interest in soccer, but I’m worried sick about hooligans,” said Mikako Murata, a 29-year-old homemaker living in Tokyo. “I’m thinking about retreating from Tokyo to my parents’ house in the hinterlands.”

Japan, a nation where people leave little to chance, has gone into anti-hooligan overdrive. In the four years since the last World Cup was held in France, delegations have scoured the soccer universe for tips on fighting the barbarian hordes Japan expects will arrive to watch the biggest sporting event on Earth. Japan is co-hosting the World Cup with South Korea in June, with matches held throughout both countries.

Drawing on a special national anti-hooligan budget of $35.6 million, thousands of Japanese police have fanned out to warn businesses of the danger of hooligans, pronounced “fuurigans” in Japanese, in the process terrifying many shopkeepers by showing them footage of foreign soccer fans attacking police, burning shops and brawling.

One of the ingenious weapons in Japan’s arsenal is something reminiscent of the Middle Ages--a sort of pole-mounted wire noose to encircle foreign ankles.

“The best way to defeat taller opponents would be to trip them up and then subdue them on the ground,” police informed Japanese reporters.

Another technology is more evocative of the Roman Colosseum: nets. Police have unveiled special guns that cast large webs over intended targets. A test in December successfully entangled actors posing as the foreign menace at a distance of 16 feet.

On other fronts, authorities have enlisted “hooligan helpers” in areas around the 10 stadiums where matches will be held to warn of troublemakers, beefed up K9 units and bought new plexiglass riot shields. If those precautions don’t work, they’ve also programmed giant trucks with huge digital signs that read in several languages: “We are the police. Calm down.”

In Miyagi prefecture, a largely rural area that will be the site of three matches, a local assemblyman warns of foreigners selling cocaine and heroin, burning parked cars and paralyzing traffic systems.

“We must also brace against unwanted babies being conceived by foreigners who rape our women,” said Takayoshi Konno, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. “Clearly we must prepare for the worst.”

Certainly some Japanese concern is warranted, given past soccer-related trouble in Europe and Latin America, where pitched fighting has erupted inside stadiums coupled with violence and vandalism nearby. But Japan’s reaction has arguably bordered on the extreme, prompting foreign governments to mount a calming campaign.

The British Embassy in Tokyo has set up Web sites, organized traveling road shows of sports club members and journalists to explain British sports traditions, and brought two ministers over from London to address the issue.

Even as the media whip up fears of a modern-day invasion of the Huns, most Japanese seem a bit vague about exactly what a hooligan looks like.

“I’m not really sure,” homemaker Murata said. “They’re probably not American, although some of those New York Yankee fans might come pretty close. They’re probably bald, fat and drunk, with tattoos.”

One problem foreign embassies are grappling with is that even behavior considered normal by ordinary sports enthusiasts abroad--a bit of yelling and carrying on--can seem menacing in a nation where fans chant politely to the beat of brass bands, opposing cheerleaders bow respectfully to each other and fans cart off their own litter.

The subtext for much of the anxiety, sociologists say, is Japan’s often-complex view of foreigners, its relatively low tolerance for disorder and ongoing strains in its relationship with the outside world.

For most of its history, Japan could control its contacts with foreigners, as seen by its insistence during centuries past that traders and emissaries stay in small areas around Nagasaki and Yokohama.

While Japan these days is an increasingly open society, there’s still a tendency, particularly among older, more conservative people to blame ills on outsiders, said Ryogo Mabuchi, a sociologist with Nara University.

“The crime rate among foreigners living in Japan is actually much lower than among Japanese,” he said. “That’s a fact. But many Japanese still have a biased image.”

Globalization and cheap imports have also spurred anti-foreign sentiments among farmers and other workers worried about their livelihoods. Overseas practices increasingly dictate how Japanese society is structured, its workers paid and its industries reorganized, undermining centuries-old traditions.

And then there’s the size issue. Police are concerned about the bulk of the potential troublemakers, resulting in a buying spree of oversized handcuffs and much public fretting that judo and jujitsu skills will be ineffective.

“Japanese youths are bigger these days, but still nothing compared to Europeans,” Masatsugu Oi, part of the special World Cup security division in the city of Sapporo, told reporters.

As fears have spread like a wave through a stadium, some Japanese have decided their best defense is to flee as quickly as possible. Car dealers near the Sapporo Dome even plan to drive their fleets away for safekeeping.

“Headquarters said we should be all right, but we just can’t afford to be optimistic,” said Wataru Saito, branch manager at Sapporo Nissan, a dealership near the Dome.

One plan is to deprive the marauders of ammunition. Residents have been instructed to remove flowerpots, bricks, bottles and anything else that might become hooligan missiles.

Another would limit the elixir that fuels much wanton destruction: beer. While brewers Asahi, Sapporo and Kirin may secretly hope for a monthlong binge to spur flagging sales, stadiums plan to limit sales of beer to the first half of the matches and serve it only in paper cups. Drinking establishments are also on alert.

“We won’t let people drink here if they were at the matches,” said Seiichi Kawai, manager of a beer hall in the city of Sendai. “That said, we haven’t had any experience dealing with foreign hooligans, so we’re still not real sure how to handle all this.”

For most Japanese, there’s only one real source of all things hooligan--jolly England--with Battleground No. 1 seen as the June 7 game in Sapporo between England and Argentina.

Not only did Argentine player Aldo Duscher break the left foot of star English player David Beckham in April--enough of a reason for a good bash for some avid sports fans--there was also Argentine Diego Maradona’s incredible goal in 1986 that prevented England from advancing, not to mention the Falklands War. Also on the radar screen are games involving the Netherlands, Germany and Brazil, among others.

The close association between England and trouble in many Japanese minds, reinforced by the media and fanned by the police, has kicked the British government into overdrive amid fears that billions in trade, investment and tourism could go up in a cloud of beer breath. Its goal: Preserve the image of the “British gentleman.”

“The Japanese like hosting international sporting events, but most of these have involved the Olympic crowd attended by the likes of Princess Anne,” said Jonathan Watts, the Japan correspondent for Britain’s Guardian newspaper and an avid soccer fan. “Now they’re going to see what real in-your-face working-class Britain is like.”

It is argued repeatedly that most English sports fans are quite well-behaved. And just in case, London says it will confiscate the passports of 900 known sports ruffians five days before the beginning of the World Cup to prevent them from traveling--under the Football Disorder Act, legislation that provides police powers not even available in cases of known pedophiles, armed robbers or terrorists.

“We’re confident this will stop the hard-core troublemakers from coming in,” an embassy spokesman said.

Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service is also passing on tips and posting undercover hooligan spotters at airport immigration halls and Japanese stadium gates.

British diplomats hope to educate everyday fans so they won’t scare their Japanese hosts. “You are an ambassador for your country,” a Foreign Office Web site says. “Loud and boisterous behavior in public is less accepted than in the UK.... Don’t take your shirt off in public places--if you have tattoos, do what you can to keep them out of sight.”

At the other extreme, Britain has sought to intimidate troublemakers by outlining Japan’s detention laws, under which offenders can be held for up to three weeks without charges before facing courts with a 97% conviction rate.

“It won’t be a question of saying, ‘You’re a naughty boy, get on the plane, go back home to England,’” warned Dennis McShane of the British Foreign Office. “They will see the next World Cup in four years’ time eating a bowl of rice in a Japanese prison.”

Japan’s greatest protection against the rowdy foreign masses, however, is arguably one that’s served it well at least as far back as the Mongols’ attempted invasion in the 13th century: its island status and distance from other civilizations.

The average fan from Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil or Britain needs to travel upward of 12,000 miles round trip and spend as much as $7,000 to attend these games. The result, organizers estimate, is that fewer than 10,000 British fans will make the trip, compared with the 25,000 who crossed the English Channel to attend the World Cup in 1998.

Of course, not everyone is looking at the soccer ball’s dark patches. A local soccer booster club in Osaka hopes to counteract the stereotype that all foreigners are potential hooligans. The group is printing up 1,000 T-shirts that say: “I am not a hooligan” in Japanese, said club member Takamasa Tamura. Foreigners will be asked to wear them so Japanese will rest easier, he said.

Finally, if all else fails, some towns are hoping to appeal to the hooligans’ softer side. As a sideline to the main show, they are offering the foreigners tea ceremonies, lessons in flower-arranging and guided tours of historical sites.

Hisako Ueno in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.