* Yutaka Akita ( 秋田豊, born 1970 ), former football player played in Japan National Football Team

Football legend, former FC Bayern President and DFB Vice-President, Franz Beckenbauer, on the other hand, showed his support for Stoiber by letting him join the German national football team on their flight home from Japan after the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

Association football has gained wide popularity since the founding of the Japan Professional Football League in 1992.

Football is a popular sport in Japan, after J League ( Japan Professional Football League ) was established in 1991.

On 28 March 1976, clubs from Indonesia, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Japan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Fiji participated in the first Hong Kong Sevens Tournament at the Hong Kong Football Club in Happy Valley sponsored by Rothmans ' Tobacco and Cathay Pacific.

Nakata began his professional career in 1995 and won the Asian Football Confederation Player of the Year award in 1997 and 1998, the Scudetto with A. S. Roma in 2001, played for Japan in three FIFA World Cup tournaments ( 1998, 2002 and 2006 ) and played in the Olympics twice ( 1996 and 2000 ).

He is currently President of the Japan Rugby Football Union as well as the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians ' Union.

Waseda University Rugby Football Club currently is the reigning university rugby union champion in Japan, reaching the university championships 28 times, and winning fourteen times.

He went on to play for Vissel Kobe in Japan, helping them be promoted from the second-tier Japan Football League to the J.

To raise the level of play domestically, to attempt to garner more fans, and to strengthen the national team, the Japan Football Association ( JFA ) decided to form a professional league.

At the same time, JSL changed its name and became the Japan Football League, a semi-professional league.

The second-tier Japan Football League ( former ), now became third-tier Japan Football League.

Its nationwide organization, Japan Football Association, administers the professional football league, J.

Although the official English name of the Japan Football Association uses the term " football ", the term sakkā ( サッカー ), derived from " soccer ", is much more commonly used than futtobōru ( フットボール ).

The introduction of Association Football in Japan is usually credited to the Kobe Regatta & Athletic Club-founded September 23rd, 1870 by a group of mainly British foreign residents-led by Dr. Alexander Cameron Sim in Kobe.

The first was the All Japan Works Football Championship ( AJWFC ), established in 1948 and open only to company teams.

The second was the All Japan Inter-City Football Championship ( AJICFC ), established in 1955 and separating clubs by cities ( any club, works, university or autonomous, could represent their home city and qualify ) but the Emperor's Cup remained dominated by universities until the late 1950s.

Baseball is the leading team sport in both Japan and Cuba, and the top level of play is similarly split between two leagues: Japan's Central League and Pacific League ; Cuba's West League and East League.

The Empire of Japan administrated the islands from 1920 under the South Pacific Mandate granted by the League of Nations.

The upcoming peace conference should break the hold of economic imperialism, or else the League and its enforced arms reductions would relegate Japan to permanent inferiority.

He was also popular with the Japanese public, having established himself as the man who angrily led Japan out of the League of Nations in 1933.

Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain and others.

Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the Council a total of fifteen members.

This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the " Council of Ten " ( the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan ) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.

Despite Japan's high standing in the League, the subsequent Lytton Report declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be returned to the Chinese.

The report passed 42 – 1 in the Assembly in 1933 ( only Japan voting against ), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League.

The threat of economic sanctions would have been almost useless because the United States, a non – League member, could continue trade with Japan.

In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year ( using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext ), and Italy in 1937.

Japan began as a permanent member of the Council, but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its invasion of Manchuria.

The Empire of Japan occupied the Marshall Islands in World War I, which were later joined with other former German territories in 1919 by the League of Nations to form the South Pacific Mandate.

On December 17, 1920, the Council of the League of Nations approved the mandate for Japan to take over all former German colonies in the Pacific Ocean located north of the equator.

On March 27, 1933, Japan left the League of Nations, but continued to manage the islands, and in the late 1930s began building air bases on several atolls.

In 1919, the League of Nations, precursor of the United Nations, awarded the islands to Japan as part of the South Pacific Mandate.

After the war, the League of Nations awarded Palau to Japan as a Class C League of Nations Mandate.

This period was marked by growing international tension, however, with Japan and Germany announcing their withdrawal from the League of Nations, to come into effect in 1935.

Other artists who have claimed Roxy Music as an influence include Steve Jones and Paul Cook of The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cars, Grace Jones, Kate Bush, Adam Ant, The Human League, Japan, Duran Duran, Simple Minds, ABC, Spandau Ballet, The Fixx, Depeche Mode, Men Without Hats, Nile Rodgers, Annie Lennox, Morrissey, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon.

Since the out break of the Syrian civil war, the Syrian economy has been hit by massive economic sanctions restricting trade with the Arab League, Australia, Canada, the European Union, ( as well as the European countries of Albania, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, and Switzerland ) Georgia, Japan, Turkey, and the United States.

For example, the year in Japan is based on the reign of the current emperor: 2006 was Year 18 of the Emperor Akihito.

With the birth of a daughter as the first child of the current Crown Prince, Naruhito, Japan considered abandoning that rule.

There apparently was also another daughter, princess Tachibana, who in turn is recorded to have become a wife of Senka and mother of princess Iwahime, who herself became a consort of Kimmei and bore Bidatsu, a future monarch and lineal ancestor of current monarchs of Japan.

* 1870 – The current flag of Japan is first adopted as the national flag for Japanese merchant ships.

The current Board members are: Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, South Korea, Mongolia, Netherlands, Niger, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela ( IAEA Board of Governors 2010 – 2011 ).

The eight current contractors are: Yuzhmorgeologya ( Russian Federation ); Interoceanmetal Joint Organization ( IOM ) ( Bulgaria, Cuba, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Russian Federation ); the Government of the Republic of Korea ; China Ocean Minerals Research and Development Association ( COMRA ) ( China ); Deep Ocean Resources Development Company ( DORD ) ( Japan ); Institut français de recherche pour l ’ exploitation de la mer ( IFREMER ) ( France ); the Government of India, and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources of Germany.

Deposits of gold, magnesium, and silver meet current industrial demands, but Japan is dependent on foreign sources for many of the minerals essential to modern industry.

The current most regularly used rule set — the one that is used on the international tournament stage — originated in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan in the 1970s: the Japanese game company Tsukuda Original registered the game under the trademark name Othello.

The current name for the sword which is one of the Three Imperial Regalia of Japan is " Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.

In 2012, Hassan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali ( 6th United Nations Secretary-General and current President of the UNESCO Panel on Democracy and Development ) gave remarks at the Unification Church event in UNESCO's headquarters in France, along with Akiko Yamanaka ( parliamentarian of Diet of Japan, Cambridge University professor and former Deputy-Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan ) and other 300 politicians and religious leaders.

The ban is not absolute, however, and some whaling continues under the auspices of scientific research ( sometimes not proved ) or aboriginal rights ; current whaling nations are Norway, Iceland and Japan and the aboriginal communities of Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada.

* Masaaki Shirakawa, the 30th ( and current ) governor of the Bank of Japan

:: Note: Although the Roman alphabet-spelling of the name of this twelfth-century emperor is the same as that of the personal name of the current sovereign of Japan, the kanji are dissimilar.

* Emperors and empresses enjoy ( ed ) the style of His / Her Imperial Majesty ( HIM ), the only current example is to be found in HIM Emperor Akihito of Japan.

It is a severe breach of etiquette in Japan to refer to the current Emperor's personal name either in speech or in writing unless absolutely required by law.

Koizumi moved the LDP away from its traditional rural agrarian base toward a more urban, neoliberal core, as Japan's population grew in major cities and declined in less populated areas, although under current purely geographical districting, rural votes in Japan are still many times more powerful than urban ones.

As the Treaty of Portsmouth is considered one of the most powerful symbols of peace in the Northern Pacific region and the most significant, shared peace history for Japan, Russia and the United States, the Forum was designed to explore from the Japanese, Russian and American perspectives, the history of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty and its relevance to current issues involving the Northern Pacific region.

In some parts of western Japan, prejudice faced by current and former residents of such areas ( burakumin " hamlet people ") is still a sensitive issue.

The current Toshiba headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.

The current pacifists believe in maintaining Article 9 and claim the SDF is unconstitutional, and would like to detach Japan from international wars.

In 1988, consequently, an alternative release was developed to serve as Super Mario Bros. 2 for western players ( and later released in Japan as Super Mario USA ); this version would play a key role in shaping Luigi's current appearance.

For example, the similarity in autosomal DNA between the Emperor Keitai of Japan, and the current Emperor, approximately 1, 500 years later, is no more than would be expected between any two random persons of purely Japanese ancestry.

The current WCO Secretary General is Kunio Mikuriya from Japan, who took office on 1 January 2009.