World Cup Omens: Beware the Crow

Have you ever looked closely at the logo sported by "Samurai Blue," Japan's representative at the World Cup? I hadn't, at least not until being alerted to a rather unusual feature on it while reading not a Sports, but a Science article. I'd tell you my source, but I'm not allowed (more on that in a future post).

Here's the Japan Football Association's logo that appears on Team Japan's jerseys with a different background. Take a close look. Can you spot the feature?

If you said, "何これ？ It has three legs!" then you are absolutely correct. Perhaps anticipating the confusion of English speaking soccer fans around the world, the JFA offers this helpful explanation on its website:

The three-legged crow holding a ball is called "Yatagarasu" and represents the god of day, namely, the sun, cited from a classical book of old China. It is believed that the Yatagarasu provided Emperor Jimmu and his army with directions on his expedition to the East and so there is a familiarity with the bird in Japan.

While not as poetic as the description I read in the other story I am forbidden to link to, it is enough background for our purposes; namely, it provides an entry point into a discussion of omens used by the Imperial Court in seventh and eighth century Japan. A little too esoteric perhaps? Bear with me, because it will all come back to soccer in the end.

One element of the legend not mentioned on the JFA site is that the sun goddess Amaterasu sent Yatagarasu as a guide for Jimmu. In this context, the event sounds like a "burning bush" moment, never to be repeated in a culture's history, and thus worthy of enshrinement as a symbol, for, say, a national soccer association. As is often the case though, the historical record offers a far more complicated view than the clarity offered by mythologies. In fact, the appearance of three legged birds at auspicious times was a little more common than one might think.

According to Herman Ooms in Imperial Symbolics in Ancient Japan, an image of a red three legged crow was prominently featured at Fujiwara-kyo, the shortlived capital near present day Nara (694-710). Both the crow's colour and number of legs evoked yang (masculine) power, and were drawn from Chinese traditions. Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, three legged birds (crows and sparrows) and five red birds were presented to the court as omens. In 690, there was a three legged crow presented to Empress Wu in China as an auspicious omen to start her reign, only to have one of its legs inconveniently fall off. She laughed it off and had it entered in the record anyway. All of this to say that behind every great myth, there probably lies a hardened realist trying to harness its power for political gain.

So as the Samurai Blue go off into battle tomorrow, spare a moment to ponder the significance of the three legged crow. Will the team draw on its yang power to lead a startling attack against the Danes? Perhaps divine inspiration will motivate them to victory. By hook or by rook, they just might find a way to advance to the round of sixteen. Regardless of the athletes' success or failure in boosting national pride, it's worth remembering that sometimes a crow is just a crow, regardless of how many legs it has.