Keita Nakagawa lives in Tokyo and loves the Buffalo Bills. How he came to be a Bills fan from afar is a story about Buffalo – and the Buffaloes.
It all begins with the playoffs following the 1988 season. The Cincinnati Bengals beat the Bills 21-10 in the AFC championship game. But in Super Bowl XXIII, Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers on a 92-yard touchdown drive in the closing minutes to beat the Bengals 20-16.
That “created huge football boom in Japan,” Nakagawa tells me by email, “and the boom much influenced me to become interested in football.” (He apologizes for his English. He needn’t, of course, as he is far more proficient in our language than we are in his.)
Soon after, Montana served as a popular pitchman for Mitsubishi, and he quickly became the face of American football in Japan. That Super Bowl win was the 49ers’ third of the 1980s, and they would win their fourth the next season in Super Bowl XXIV. That’s why many fans of the NFL in Japan took the 49ers as their own.
Still, these dominant 49ers were not the team for Nakagawa. We’ll let him tell you why.
“Nevertheless the boom, I have not become 49ers fan, because my favorite pro sports team, including baseball, is not ever victorious team, but the team which has never become champion yet, especially by a narrow margin or by dramatic lost.”
That certainly sums up the Bills of the Super Bowl era – which brings us to Wide Right. The Bills lost Super Bowl XXV to the New York Giants 20-19, and that near-miss made Nakagawa a Bills fan for life.
“So I’m looking for my favorite team like that for a few years,” he writes, “and I encountered and sympathized with Bills so much by their Super Bowl 25 ‘Wide Right.’ Furthermore, the team name and team situation were so close to my favorite Japanese pro baseball team, Kintetsu Buffaloes. Buffaloes also have never become Japanese pro baseball champion by a narrow margin every year, and lost dramatically at championship games for many times.”
What could be better than that? Nakagawa is a Buffalo fan – by way of the Buffaloes.
“Those similarities were very sympathizing and attractive for me,” he writes, “so I have become diehard Bills fan. And absolutely I promise that I will be forever Bills fan, even if Bills become Super Bowl Champion someday!”
Amen to that, brother.
Nakagawa is 52, and he points out that his birthday – May 21 – is the same as Josh Allen’s. He is a government worker in real-estate-acquisition taxes for the Kanagawa Prefecture, a coastal region just south of Tokyo. He can’t usually watch the Bills live, because 1 p.m. in Buffalo is 2 a.m. in Tokyo. And prime-time games on Sundays or Mondays fall during his weekday work hours. So he mostly tries to catch up with games on video.
He has never been to the U.S. mainland, but plans to come to Buffalo someday to see a Bills game: “Of course I will! I’m thinking of visiting Buffalo next year or year after next, to watch the live game and cheer Bills from bottom of my heart with full of Bills fans!”
His yearning to visit grows stronger with each passing season.
“Especially my hope to visit Buffalo is growing bigger and bigger recently through Facebook Bills Mafia activity, because every member is so nice, kind, and heartwarming.”
Talk about heartwarming: Here is what Nakagawa has to say about a certain come-from-behind Bills playoff game.
“The Comeback vs. Oilers in 1993 was very big and moving event for me to become forever Bills fan. Since then, I often remember the game when I face hardships or difficulties in my life, and talk to my mind, ‘I can overcome this absolutely, like Bills overcame 32 points without star players.’ That game has been giving me courage and power, to challenge and overcome hardships.”
As it happens, the Kintetsu Buffaloes merged with another team, and they are now the Orix Buffaloes. This season, they won a pennant for the first time in a quarter-century. Oh, and they have an infielder named Keita Nakagawa.
“Unfortunately I am not related with him,” Nakagawa writes. “Our alphabet names are same (Keita is given name, and Nakagawa is family name) but Chinese characters are different a little.”
Nakagawa recently posted a picture of himself eating grilled eel on the Facebook page of Bills Mafia. “In general, buffalo is grass-eating animal,” he wrote. “But recently Buffalo has already eaten up dolphin, Texas beef, and will swallow jaguar and panther also!”
Alas, that jaguar prediction did not come true. Still, these carnivorous Bills remain a contender to win their first Super Bowl. And the Buffaloes are in the playoffs in Japan, gunning for their first title, too.
Who knows? Maybe this will be the year that Buffalo – and the Buffaloes – make Keita Nakagawa doubly happy.
