{"id":13359,"date":"2026-04-28T09:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/13359\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T09:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:53:12","slug":"why-you-may-see-japanese-soccer-fans-cleaning-up-the-stadium-after-world-cup-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/13359\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you may see Japanese soccer fans cleaning up the stadium after World Cup games"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOKYO \u2014 If there’s one country guaranteed to clean up at the World Cup<\/a>, it’s Japan.<\/p>\n

Literally.<\/p>\n

Scenes of Japanese soccer<\/a> fans sweeping stadiums and picking up trash after a match first drew public attention in France in 1998 \u2014 Japan’s first appearance in the World Cup.<\/p>\n

The tradition has continued every four years. It happened at the World Cup in Qatar<\/a> in 2022, and it’s certain to continue when Japan opens play in June with group games in Arlington, Texas, and Monterrey, Mexico.<\/p>\n

The cleanup astonishes non-Japanese who might be accustomed to leaving stadiums and stepping over half-eaten food, shredded paper wrappers, and cups \u2014 empty or with liquid dribbling out.<\/p>\n

At the World Cup in Russia in 2018, Japanese players famously cleaned the dressing room after a loss and left a thank-you note in Russian. In 2022, fans left thank-you notes on rubbish bags written in Arabic, English and Japanese.<\/p>\n

A Japanese phrase explains why<\/p>\n

It’s not that complicated. Beginning in elementary school, students are socialized to behave this way \u2014 in the classroom, in the school yard or on a playing field.<\/p>\n

\u201cJapanese sports fans at world events who clean up the stadium are behaving much the same way they did when they learned how to enjoy sports as school boys and girls,\u201d Koichi Nakano, who teaches politics and history at Sophia University, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

There is a phrase in Japanese that explains it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTatsu tori ato wo nigosazu.\u201d<\/p>\n

The literal translation is: \u201cA bird leaves nothing behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rendered in English the message is: \u201cReturn it the way you found it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Japanese elementary schools don\u2019t have janitors, so the clean-up work is left to students. Office workers often dedicate time to sprucing up their areas.<\/p>\n

Also, there are relatively few trash containers in public spaces in Japan, so people take their waste home with them. This keeps the sidewalks cleaner, saves the cost of emptying trash cans, and keeps away vermin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way most ordinary soccer fans experience soccer at school is no different from other sports, and the emphasis is not just on physical education but also on moral education as well,\u201d Nakano added.<\/p>\n

Collective vs. the individual<\/p>\n

Raised in Germany, Barbara Holthus is the deputy director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo. A sociologist, she agrees it’s prudent not to put Japanese on a pedestal. Japan, like any country, has its own challenges and shortcomings.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn academically sound explanation is that people in Japan just happen to be socialized different,\u201d she told The AP. \u201cIf you grew up with a certain way of how things are being done, you apply that to even cleaning up a stadium afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

At work here is also the Japanese concept of \u201cmeiwaku,\u201d which implies not causing trouble or annoying others. From the Japanese point of view, leaving rubbish piled up in a stadium would be a bother to others.<\/p>\n

Japan is a relatively crowded place, and greater Tokyo alone has about 35 million people, almost the population of the entire state of California. People need to get along.<\/p>\n

\u201cJapanese learn early on that you don’t want to inconvenience other people,\u201d Holthus said.<\/p>\n

She said the focus is often on the collective, compared with the West where the emphasis is on the individual and individual rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to bother people. It goes to all areas of life in Japan,\u201d Holthus added. \u201cWe are raised (in the West) that we don\u2019t have to clean up after ourselves in public spaces because there is going to be some kind of public service doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And because Japanese people have received widespread praise for the clean-up, the behavior has been reinforced.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that the media has latched onto the story and lavished praise on Japanese fans, they have made it a point of pride to display those values and norms,\u201d Jeff Kingston, who teaches history at Temple University in Japan, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

A Japanese tradition<\/p>\n

The clean-up tradition is not limited to soccer’s marquee tournament. The same thing happened last year at the Under-20 World Cup in Chile as Japanese fans cleaned up after a match. And even more recently last month at Wembley Stadium in London where Japan defeated England 1-0 in an international friendly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of our traditions,\u201d said Toshi Yoshizawa, who was leading the cleanup in Chile. \u201cWe grew up with the teaching that we should leave a place cleaner than when we arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Kelly, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Yale University and a specialist on Japan, said the tradition is linked to soccer more than other sports. He speculated it’s tied to the establishment of Japan’s professional football league more than 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt (the J-League) was trying to distinguish itself from baseball by emphasizing teams\u2019 community embeddedness and commitment,\u201d Kelly wrote in an email. \u201cSoccer fans felt, and feel, more a part of the club and its stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP World Cup coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/fifa-world-cup<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO \u2014 If there’s one country guaranteed to clean up at the World Cup, it’s Japan. Literally. Scenes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10965,8,17,10966,81,10967,10968,10969,10970,10971,10972],"class_list":["post-13359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-fifa","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-katar","tag-qatar","tag-qatar2022","tag-qatar22","tag-qatar22qatar2022worldcup22worldcup2022worldcupqatarkatarf","tag-worldcup","tag-worldcup2022","tag-worldcup22"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}