Toshio Asami (浅見俊雄)

Toshio Asami was born on 3 October 1933 in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, a city now part of Saitama City. He started playing football in middle school (the JFA Hall of Fame entry names the old Saitama Prefectural Urawa Middle School) and went on to Saitama Prefectural Urawa High School, where he played half back. Urawa finished runner up at the National Sports Festival in 1950. In the 1951 school year the team won the National Sports Festival high school division, the All Japan High School Soccer Tournament and the Kanto tournament, and Japanese Wikipedia records a 52 match unbeaten run that year.

Asami studied physical education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tokyo and played for the university football club. Tokyo won the first All Japan University Football Championship in the 1952 season (played in January 1953), and he captained the team in his fourth year. His later academic work in physical education and sports science grew out of this training.

Asami qualified as a referee at 23, became a JFA first class referee in 1959 and a FIFA international referee in 1961, a status he held until 1983. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics he served as a linesman (now called an assistant referee), including at the group match between Iran and Mexico. He refereed 74 Japan Soccer League matches between 1965 and 1982 and took charge of matches at the 1979 FIFA World Youth Championship in Japan, the AFC Asian Cup and the Asian Games. FIFA gave him its special merit award for referees in 1983. He also coached, leading Japan's youth team in 1964 and the University of Tokyo side from 1967 to 1975, according to Japanese Wikipedia.

Alongside refereeing, Asami built an academic career as a sports scientist. He became a professor at the University of Tokyo's College of Arts and Sciences, retired from Tokyo in 1994 and then taught at Nippon Sport Science University. Both universities made him professor emeritus. He was the first director of the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences from 2001 to 2004, a member of the first and second terms of the Ministry of Education's Central Council for Education, and in 2008 chaired a ministry panel on the future of the National Olympic Stadium in Kasumigaoka. He also served the Yamaha Motor Foundation for Sports as a director, chair of its review committee and director in charge of research, including its studies of disability sport.

Asami joined the JFA board in 1978 and from 1991 also sat on the J.League board. As chairman of the JFA referees committee from 1983, and of the J.League referees committee from 1993, he set out to produce referees capable of officiating at a World Cup. He invested in young referees, laid foundations for professional refereeing, and established inspector and instructor systems. He also created a qualification structure for women referees, which led to Japanese women officiating at world tournaments. From 1986 to 2002 he served on the AFC Referees Committee, including as vice chairman, introducing referee education and fitness training and stricter standards across Asia. He later served on the AFC Disciplinary Committee, including as vice chairman, promoting fair play.

Asami kept his private life out of public view. Details of a spouse or children have not been made public. Late in life he lived in Tokyo, where he spent his final years in a care facility in Bunkyo ward. In a column for the Yamaha Motor Foundation for Sports he described himself as someone who chased two or three goals at once across football, refereeing and science.

Colleagues remembered Asami for his insistence on following the Laws of the Game and on fair play. Kozo Tashima, JFA honorary president, said he always gave opinions and advice grounded in the rules and a strong sense of justice, and that his teaching on fair play and the integrity of sport lay behind Tashima's own decision to run for FIFA president. Saburo Kawabuchi recalled that in an era when few referees were strict, Asami enforced fair play firmly. In his own writing Asami described linking sport and science as the work he was most able to contribute in Japan.

Asami is regarded as one of the architects of modern Japanese refereeing. Tashima credited his efforts for Japanese referees reaching the World Cup even before Japan's national team qualified. Current JFA referees chairman Kenji Ogiya, who became a first class referee in 1999 under Asami's chairmanship, said he laid the foundations of today's refereeing community. His rulebooks on the Laws of the Game and refereeing method were standard references for Japanese referees for decades.

FIFA special merit award for referees (1983). AFC service award (2002). Chichibu Prize for sports medicine and science (2004). Japan Football Hall of Fame, 7th class (2010, special selection). AFC Gold Star award (2013). Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette (2016).

Asami's books include Soccer (Baseball Magazine, 1960, with Shigemaru Takenokoshi and Junji Tanaka), an introduction to human movement science (Taishukan, 1976), a detailed guide to the Laws of the Game and refereeing method (Taishukan, 1984, revised 1992 and 2002), Human Beings and Body Movement (Kyorin Shoin, 1984), The Science of Sport (University of Tokyo Press, 1987) and Children's Health and Sport (Ishiyaku, 1996, co-author). He wrote a column series on sport and science for the Yamaha Motor Foundation for Sports.

Asami died of old age at 1:15 pm on Sunday 8 November 2026 at a care facility in Bunkyo, Tokyo, aged 93. The Japan Football Association announced his death on 9 November with tributes from president Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, honorary president Kozo Tashima, adviser Saburo Kawabuchi and referees chairman Kenji Ogiya. The funeral was held privately with family.