ABSTRACT
The often tense relations between Japan and China appear to be worsening. […] This time, however, relations are inflamed not over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine memorializing the war dead (including Class A war criminals), nor a sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands), nor the competing development of of shore gas fields in the East China Sea. This time the uproar is over sports—football, or soccer—fueled by and inseparably connected by all of these issues. Sports was supposed to be above politics, right?
