Reina Iizuka: ‘Rugby and football are basically cousins’

Born and raised in Toronto, Japanese 23-year-old Reina Iizuka was the first female in Canadian history to play men’s university tackle football. Upon graduating last year, she moved to Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, to play professional women’s rugby for the Suzuka-based Mie Pearls. She talks about her sporting transition and her ultimate dream of representing the Japan national team.

1. You made history playing college football, so why change to rugby? It was just chōkan (intuition). I’ve always been very intuitive. So if I feel something, and I feel like it’s the right direction to go, then I just go for it.

2. How familiar were you with rugby before you moved to Japan? I had watched rugby, but I’d never played it before because my high school didn’t have a rugby team. We had a really good track and field team, and the rugby and track and field seasons were in conflict, so I guess my school chose track over rugby. And every season was basically football season, so there was no time to do anything else anyway.

3. You’ve spent most of your life in Canada, so how has the transition to Japan been? I’ve got family that live on the Sea of Japan coast in Ishikawa Prefecture, which is pretty far from Yokkaichi but way closer than Canada, right? I went there for three weeks recently to see my grandparents. But I do miss home, I miss people, I miss my mom. And I miss shawarma, I haven’t found any in this city yet.

4. Beyond the lack of shawarma, how’s life in Yokkaichi? Yokkaichi is nice. They consider it a farming town, but it's a full city; there’s a downtown and everything. I know this is a little off topic, but there’s so much pork here. Tonteki, pork in a garlic shoyu sauce, is the soul food. It’s so good — though there’s a pig factory right by our training field and sometimes you hear the pig’s getting butchered, which is kind of crazy.

5. How did the opportunity to play professional rugby in Japan come about? I wanted to play pro rugby, and I'm Japanese and knew I wanted to work in Japan at some point, but I had no connections here. I thought, “How the heck am I supposed to connect with the right people in Japan?” Then a family friend suggested I network on LinkedIn, so I started networking like crazy; I was obsessed.

Eventually, someone messaged me from (professional Mie rugby team) Honda Heat, who then put me in touch with the general manager of my current team, the Mie Pearls. Within three days, I was offered a three-year contract to play in Japan. The general manager also speaks English, which I think is his leverage for bringing in international players. Anyway, I realized that if you take action, good things happen.

6. Did you show the Pearls football clips to convince them to sign you? Prior to my first meeting with the general manager, I had some older football film along with news articles and short films that I was able to send to the club.

7. Traditionally, many pro rugby contracts in Japan require players to work a certain amount of hours for the company that owned the respective team. Are you required to do this? Our team has around 150 sponsors, but I don’t have to work for any of them. My situation is a little bit unique, I think, because of my goals and the team’s vision and my Japanese-language ability at this point — though I am studying to become more fluent. My whole life is set up for rugby and training and eventually being a national team player.

8. What position are you playing? I’m playing as a winger. It’s great getting space in attack, but I think the great wingers can defend well in space, too. I also like that rugby is similar to football, the sports are basically cousins, and I like how gritty it is.

9. Rugby tends to be a difficult sport for people to pick up later in life; how are you adjusting to it? It’s interesting. I’m hitting different learning curves. We just finished the 15s season and now we’re starting sevens (a shortened format of the game, the numbers refer to the number of players), so I have no idea what it’s going to be like. There are advantages from having played football: Sometimes I can do things physically that the other girls maybe can’t — just because that’s what football required — and bringing it onto the rugby pitch feels great.

But there have been times when I was like, “I don’t know what the hell is going on here.” Even small things like the timing of when to go forward as a winger or conceptualizing how moves and plays are sequenced; football is all about downs and set plays, so the flow of the rugby was tough to grasp. But as with anything, you’ve just got to be patient and understand that there’s a learning curve. And having great teammates really helps.

10. Are your teammates primarily Japanese or is there a mix of nationalities? We have some players from Fiji and Kenya, and we’re getting a couple more in from New Zealand. But there’s only so many you can bring in because the league has a rule that only three foreign players can be on the pitch at any one time so that the games aren’t dominated by them.

11. How long is the season and do you get big crowds coming to watch? The 15s season is three or four months long. Our last game, a semifinal that we unfortunately lost, was the first game in the history of Japan women’s rugby where people paid to come watch. The stadium (the Mie Kotsu Suzuka Sports Garden Stadium) was pretty packed, which was awesome.

The sevens season is around eight months. We have four main sevens tournaments and the big Japan national tournament. Sevens is huge here. I think it’s got something for everybody if you want to grow the sport of rugby: It’s exciting, it’s short, it’s in the Olympics.

12. How often are you training? My team trains Monday to Saturday with Wednesdays off, typically. But I was training seven days a week, Monday to Sunday, including my own training. But it was too much — I almost blacked out, which was scary. Doctors told me I had to chill out. It’s hard for me to regulate that drive sometimes.

13. You’ve played sport with men your whole life. What’s it been like making the transition to playing sport with women? It’s my first time playing with women, but I’m also playing with Japanese women, so there are cultural as well as gender differences. In Canada, the guys would go crazy and be rowdy in the locker room. We don’t do that as much here, and sometimes I miss that contained wildness.

14. What are your goals here as a rugby player? I would like to play at a Rugby World Cup. The 2024 Olympics team was selected recently, so that’s gone for me. But I don’t want to just be selected for the next World Cup (set for 2025 and hosted by England), I want to be a starting team member. But I’d also like to get into marketing, maybe do a couple commercials once I get better, and not just rely on my sports paycheck.

15. You have been an ambassador for women’s and girls’ participation in sport in the past. Do you want to continue in that role? I think that just happens naturally. You look at some of the most successful athletes, and they’re primary goal isn’t that stuff; their primary goal is just being great. And if it inspires other people to do the same, then it's an honor.

16. You’ve said before that you feel Japanese “to (your) core” and that Japanese values dictated your upbringing. So there’d be no split allegiances if you played against Canada in rugby? Hell no! No disrespect to Canada, I’ve got a lot of love for Canada, but my dream is to have that Japanese flag on my chest. My friend played in the Olympics, and she gave me her long-sleeve training top, which I debated whether I should put on. But seeing myself in the mirror with my country’s flag on my chest, it reminds me of how I want to feel; it makes me proud, makes me stand a little bit taller. And the kit is so sick. I’m like, “That’s my future, that’s crazy.”

17. Do you miss football or is rugby scratching the same itch? Football was like my first love, you know? I don’t miss playing it as much because there’s so many similarities between rugby and football. But rugby is like that new relationship; there’s a spark, it’s exciting, unexpected things happen, and I’m exploring it. So there are things that I bring from football to rugby, but other things I have to leave behind.

18. Once you’re playing days are over, do you still have plans to get into coaching? I do. I had the good fortune to be born in Canada but have always felt Japanese, so being able to understand the Western world and the Eastern world is something that I hope will give me a lot of leverage and will help me connect with people better when I become a coach.

19. Do you see growth in women’s rugby in Japan? Yes, for sure. A lot of people are becoming interested in it. And I think sevens and the fact that it’s in the Olympics is really helping. It gives players a goal that’s attainable and within reach. And it’s great that now people are paying to come watch us play and that some of the matches are on local TV.

20. What’s your favorite piece of pop culture? I’m kind of always out of the loop, but I enjoy (the TV shows) “Peaky Blinders” and “Rick and Morty.”