From former pro and international Sevens rugby player to growing the Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix women’s rugby club to be one of the best in Japan (and globally), starting apparel lines and being appointed as Thailand Women’s Sevens Head Coach in 2024, Yohei Shinomiya is someone we have had an eye on for some time.
Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix Club
Yohei Shinomiya’s involvement with the Japanese Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix club, which for many years has been one of the leading clubs in Japan, has seen them produce a number of Sakura 7s and XVs national team players. On the Sakura XV tour to Italy and WXV 2024, as many as 8-10 members were from the club, while 5 club members were with the Sakura 7s representing Japan at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
As the Thailand Head Coach, he has faced his own players across the opening two rounds of the current Asia Rugby Emirates Sevens Series 2024 playing for Japan.
Photo Credit – Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix Club – had 5 players selected for Sakura 7s @ Paris 2024
In 2024 the Phoenix won both the domestic Japanese fifteens 2023–2024 National Women’s Rugby Championship and Taiyo Seimei Women’s Sevens Series 2024 Championship.
They have also announced signing partnerships with overseas clubs over recent years (signing an agreement with Super Rugby W side Western Force in 2023 and will host them at the end of 2024), and there were even rumours (which still persist) of the Phoenix joining the Super W XVs competition in Australia.
For the past two years, they have also sent a team to compete in the HKFC Tens – so when Shinomiya was unveiled as the new Thailand Rugby Union Women’s Sevens Head Coach in July 2024, we were surprised and asked how he would balance his roles?
We spoke with Yohei Shinomiya at length about his own rugby background, transitioning from player to management and coach and his personal ambitions.
Yohei Shinomiya – The Rugby Player
Yohei talks candidly about his introduction to rugby when he was young. “I was born in Yokohama, in the Kanagawa prefecture (in Kawasaki City, which is part of the Greater Tokyo Area.) It used to be really wild, with lots of gangs and mafia and stuff. Then my parents put me into a public school – Toin Gakuen. Have you heard about them?”.
Yohei reminisced fondly of his junior playing days when he first started picking up rugby at Toin Gakuen Junior High School when he was 12, and when he was in the High School side, they would compete in the national school tournament. Several Brave Blossoms came through their ranks. “We had lots of good players growing up, and we still have a really good connection and we always help each other,” he reminded us.
He also mentioned that he helped Kotaro Matsushima (the Japanese national wing and fullback), when he finished high school, to get to South Africa to play rugby with the Sharks in Durban. Matsushima had spent some years growing up in SA).
Yohei himself went to university in Japan where he also won the All-Japan University Rugby Football Championship and was a leader in the Kanto Gakuin University team that won three University Rugby Championships in the space of four years. He joined Yamaha Motor Company after graduation and went to study rugby in New Zealand while enrolled with Yamaha.
Yohei was the first Japanese player to sign a contract with a professional team in South Africa in 2005 (with Boland and the Bulls) before playing for professional rugby in New Zealand, Italy and France.
Yohei Shinomiya as Thai Women 7s Head Coach has had his team has faced Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix players in Sakura 7s in 2024
We asked him if he had a favourite rugby club experience and he said his season with Manawatu in New Zealand competing in the ITM was a standout as he loved the rugby culture, but in terms of lifestyle he said it’s hard to beat Italy.
Yohei returned to Japan (he previously played Sevens in the national team and played at the Sevens Rugby World Cup in Hong Kong in 2005) to compete for a spot in the national Sevens team again and was offered a place on the RWC Sevens squad but turned it down due to injury and retired in December 2013.
Toin Gakuen School Japan – Rugby Roots
We researched the school and they were recently victorious in the Japanese 100th National High School Rugby Tournament in 2021 – the tournament has been held annually since 1917, and since 1962, has been held at the Higashi Osaka Hanazono Rugby Stadium in Higashi Osaka, at the end of December to early January. The facilities include three rugby fields, one of which was used during the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Another Toin Gakuen alumni is the aforementioned Kotaro Matsushima, while Keito Aoki (selected for the Japan Talent Squad programme in 2024) and current Pacific Nations Cup Brave Blossom member Warner Dearns both played in the school competition in recent years. In fact, 17 of the Japanese RWC 2019 squad competed at the annual Japanese high school rugby tournament which is referred to as ‘Hanazono’ which means ‘flower garden’.
Toin Gakuen also took part in the SANIX World Rugby Youth Tournament 2024.
Rugby Post-Playing Career – Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix Rises From The Ashes
Much of Yohei Shinomiya’s life post-retirement has been consumed by the Tokyo Sankyo Phoenix – a story on its own worth being told in a documentary.
He said after his playing days, he got involved with women’s rugby after meeting some players. He came across the Phoenix but nobody was really taking care of them. Around that time, the Japanese Olympic committee decided to take Sevens rugby more seriously as it would be an Olympic sport at Rio 2016.
Yohei Shinomiya set up a meeting with the players but only five players came to the meeting. They discussed when they were going to train, where, and how to look after them as players and as a club. He said, “We had no place to train, no money, no company set up. So I said, Okay, I will do it. I will look after you.”
He set up a company and coached, managed, owned, and spent his money on the club, and admitted he got on the phone to try to call many, many sponsors. He has now built up the Phoenix to be one of our best clubs in the world, and along the way, he has worked with the Shimizu Koto Blue Sharks (where he has been listed as their Director since 2015) and helped them set up and be part of the Japan Rugby League One.
We were intrigued by what his motivations were a decade ago, as women’s rugby was so poorly supported then in Japan (and globally).
“It was based on hope. I had other options then as I could have gone to Oxford to study and play rugby but it would have been expensive. I was thinking of joining to coach a company or university team but had no formal coaching background,” he explained.
Yohei added, “The Phoenix were nearly bankrupt and had nothing, zero. But I thought women’s sports and rugby were going to be big in the future. Even my wife is a former professional volleyball player and we hoped that women’s sports were going to be bigger, and I knew that Olympic participation was going to help as a whole.”
Photo Credit – Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix
He is proud that the Phoenix are a leader in Japan, in the way they are structured, in how they promote themselves, how they get sponsors, and how the club is set up. We also talked of the challenges as the women’s clubs play national sevens and XV competitions but there is no revenue from broadcast deals and little financial support from the JRFU for players that earn national team selection.
“Now we have more staff and more players and we have our own facilities. In our area in Tokyo, there is a decent playing base and it’s their first choice to come to Phoenix so it’s easier for us to recruit,” Yohei told us.
He acknowledges that the mood in Japan now means it’s actually tough to get sponsors following the Tokyo Olympics and there is a need to do more promotions but they have many partners including the Western Force in Australia and Perpignan in France. The Phoenix are looking at establishing player exchanges with the French club (who play in the second tier).
“That Catalan area is a big big rugby country and I have been there on several trips to see them play at Perpignan and met with the GM and President and there is a real passion for women’s rugby,” he told us.
Japanese Rugby and Professionalism
The state of professionalism in Japan has always been a tough one to figure out, even in the men’s game and the JRLO (Japan Rugby League One) with the company links. Yohei told us that most of the women players in Japan are not professional players and they only have a handful at the Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix who are (around five women’s players),
He added, “That means the club pays them even when they leave for the national team and most players work full-time and look for sponsors. So our naming sponsor, Sankyu, employs around 7-8 players and others work for other sponsor companies and some players try to find a sponsor themselves to work with them.”
Not having centrally contracted players in Japan might surprise some fans but there is a demand for the game to grow. The JRFU run the national Taiyo Seimei Women’s Sevens Series, but Yohei says there have been talks of having a fully professional women’s XVs league in Japan, he is not sure how that would work and if commercially, but it is something he would love to see if the clubs are fairly compensated.
For example, his Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix club has as many as 8 players selected for the WXV in 2024 (the Japanese team are playing in WXV2 in South Africa) which takes place from September to October and they will also be away for longer at the RWC 2025.
Yohei Shinomiya says they have also cut down on importing foreign players and focus on local talent at the Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix. There were a few reasons for this but cost-cutting and trying to develop local talent were two of the core reasons.
Asian Rugby News
- Number Of Japan Tours Confirmed By Australian Rugby Clubs
- Waisale Serevi Appointed Rugby India Sevens Head Coach.
- JRFU Fixtures 2024 – Brave Blossoms, Japan XV, Sakura XV.
- Tokyo Sankyu Phoenix Sign Partnership With Western Force
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