Kawabuchi Saburō

Kawabuchi Saburō, (born December 3, 1936, Ōsaka, Japan), Japanese businessman who played a significant role in the launch of Japan’s first professional football (soccer) league.

Kawabuchi began playing football in high school because he wanted the chance to visit the city of Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, where his team was scheduled to play a match. He then attempted to quit the team, but older players recognized his potential and persuaded him to remain. As a freshman at Waseda University, Tokyo, he became a regular on what was the strongest university team in the country. The next year Kawabuchi was recruited for the national team. As centre-back, he competed in the Olympics in Rome in 1960 and in Tokyo in 1964. He also played in qualifying games for the World Cup in Sweden in 1958 and in Chile in 1962. He continued playing with the national team even after joining the staff of Furukawa Denki, one of Japan’s largest makers of electric wires and cables, and became head coach at age 35.

In 1988 Kawabuchi volunteered to act as general secretary of the Japan Soccer League, which organized competitions between amateur teams sponsored by major corporations. This experience inspired the vision of a professional football league in Japan. In 1991 he quit his full-time job to assume leadership of the Japan Professional Football League, known locally as the J.League. Even Kawabuchi expressed surprise at the Japanese response to the J.League. In its first season, sales of television rights, merchandise, and tickets for 180 games totaled $1 billion. A key factor behind the successful launch of professional football was intense coverage by the mass media. The youth of Japan especially were drawn to it because it was faster-paced than baseball and, unlike sumo, unencumbered by ancient Japanese traditions.

In 1994 Kawabuchi was appointed vice president of the Japan Football Association (JFA). He became the JFA’s president in 2002, at which time he stepped down as J.League chairman. He remained at the JFA until 2008. That year he was inducted into the Japan Football Hall of Fame.