Introduction | A News Story That Made Me Think
In early March 2026, a story in Japan caught my attention.
Five members of the men’s football club at Ryutsu Keizai University were found to have used cannabis. In response, the entire football club — all activities — was suspended.
Ryutsu Keizai University is one of the most prestigious football programs in the Kanto University Football League, having produced numerous J.League professionals. In 2026, the club had 248 registered members.
Five people broke the rules. 248 people lost the right to play.
When I saw this from here in New Zealand, I found myself thinking again about a concept that is deeply embedded in Japanese sports culture: rентай sekinin — collective responsibility.
For families here in New Zealand, this kind of response may seem very difficult to understand. So in this article, I’d like to explore the idea of collective responsibility from multiple perspectives — without claiming to have a simple answer.
What Is “Collective Responsibility”?
Collective responsibility refers to the idea that when one member of a group causes a problem, the entire group shares in the consequences — including penalties.
In Japanese sports culture, particularly in school club activities (bukatsu) and university athletic clubs, this principle runs very deep.
“What one person does is everyone’s responsibility.”
“If you didn’t notice what your teammate was doing, you failed to look after each other.”
These are the kinds of assumptions that underlie decisions like the one at Ryutsu Keizai — where the actions of five individuals led to the suspension of an entire 248-person squad.
Where Does This Culture Come From?
To understand collective responsibility in Japan, it helps to look at the cultural roots.
One key factor is Japan’s collectivist value system. Historically, Japanese society has placed great emphasis on group harmony over individual expression. When an individual steps out of line, it is often perceived not just as a personal failure, but as a betrayal of the group as a whole.
Another factor is the educational philosophy behind club activities. Bukatsu — the Japanese school and university club system — has long been seen as a place to build character, not just athletic skill. Within this framework, collective responsibility is used as a tool to develop mutual accountability: “We succeed together, and we fall together.”
There is also a strong tradition of institutional responsibility in Japan. Coaches and supervisors are expected to be accountable for the overall conduct of their members. When something goes wrong, the organisation as a whole is expected to bow, apologise, and take collective responsibility in front of the public.
My Own Experience of Collective Responsibility in Japan
Looking back now, the scenes I witnessed may be hard to believe for coaches and players here in New Zealand. But when I was playing football in Japan, I experienced the weight of collective responsibility firsthand.
- “One person’s forgotten item” — everyone shaves their head: If just one player forgot to bring their equipment, the entire team had to shave their heads. There was no room for individual circumstances or personal explanation. It was simply processed as a collective punishment for “disrupting the team’s discipline.”
- “If even one person falls behind” — everyone starts over: During gruelling running drills, if a single player failed to meet the target time, every member of the squad — including those who had already finished — returned to the starting line and ran it again from the beginning. Under that kind of collective pressure, the feeling that dominated wasn’t so much “let’s support each other” as it was a fear closer to “don’t be the one who drags us down.”
At the time, these practices were accepted in Japanese sports — in some ways even celebrated as a kind of virtue, or framed as an important part of education.
The “Positive Side” of Collective Responsibility
It would be unfair to dismiss collective responsibility without acknowledging the genuine reasoning behind it.
It can build team cohesion.
When every member knows that their individual actions affect the whole group, it creates a powerful sense of shared ownership. Teammates may be more likely to look out for each other, speak up, and support one another before problems escalate.
It can surface problems early.
The knowledge that “if something happens, we all suffer” can reduce the tendency to ignore warning signs. In theory, it encourages internal accountability before situations spiral out of control.
It maintains organisational discipline.
In high-level competitive sport, a certain level of collective discipline is often essential. Collective responsibility can serve as a structural mechanism for maintaining that standard.
The “Negative Side” of Collective Responsibility
At the same time, there are serious and well-founded criticisms.
Innocent people are punished.
In this case, 243 members who had no involvement in the drug use were suspended. Penalising individuals for something they did not do raises clear questions of fairness.
Individual accountability can become diluted.
When responsibility is spread across everyone, paradoxically, the actual individuals responsible may feel less personal accountability. The focus shifts to the group’s punishment rather than the individual’s reckoning.
It can become a culture of fear.
“I must not cause trouble for my teammates” is a healthy feeling in moderate doses — but when taken to an extreme, it can breed silence, suppression, and anxiety rather than genuine self-discipline. Behaving well out of fear of group punishment is not the same as behaving well because you understand why it matters.
It can overshadow support for the individuals involved.
In cases involving substances like cannabis, the underlying issues — mental health, peer pressure, addiction — deserve real attention. When the organisational response dominates the conversation, the support those five individuals may genuinely need can get lost.
How This Looks From New Zealand
For children and families who have grown up in New Zealand, this is likely to feel genuinely foreign.
New Zealand’s sporting culture is built on individual responsibility and personal choice. When someone breaks the rules, that person faces the consequences — but the idea of suspending teammates who had nothing to do with the incident is very hard to make sense of here.
“Why am I being stopped from playing? I didn’t do anything.”
That’s a very reasonable thing for a New Zealand child — or adult — to think.
NZ sporting culture absolutely values team spirit and looking after one another. But that solidarity is expected to come from trust and genuine connection — not from a structural punishment system.
Thinking About It as a Coach
As a coach working with children every day, I think a lot about what it means to be a team.
In any team sport, the actions of individuals absolutely affect the whole group. Turning a blind eye to a teammate’s behaviour isn’t what good teammates do.
But I also believe that “monitoring and controlling your teammates” is not what team culture should be about.
The strongest teams I have ever been part of — or observed — are built on mutual respect and trust, not on fear of collective punishment.
If collective responsibility is enforced primarily through fear of letting your teammates down, I wonder whether it actually builds the kind of team culture we want. Or whether it simply creates compliance without genuine understanding.
Closing Thoughts | The Value of Sitting With the Question
This news story has opened up a debate in Japan about whether collective responsibility is fair, effective, or appropriate in modern sport.
There are people who believe it is necessary to maintain group discipline.
There are people who believe it is fundamentally unjust to punish those who did nothing wrong.
Both positions have genuine reasoning behind them.
Rather than rushing to a verdict, I think the more useful question is: why does this culture exist, and what does it tell us about what a group believes sport is for?
At Glocal Football, we operate at the intersection of Japanese and New Zealand sporting cultures every day. We don’t think one culture has all the answers. But we do think that asking these questions — honestly and from multiple angles — is one of the best things sport can teach us.
