Photo/Illutration Kozo Tashima, honorary president of the Japan Football Association, speaks during an interview in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward on Nov. 6. (Wataru Sekita)

Don Quixote charged at the giants.

“Look, your worship,” his squire Sancho Panza warned him. “What we see there are not giants but windmills.”

Those long arms, he explained, were merely sails turning in the wind.

But the knight would not listen. On he charged, crying, “Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for it is a single knight that attacks you!”

The sails began to turn, shattering his lance and sending him tumbling to the ground. Yet he would not admit defeat. An enchanter, he insisted, had turned the giants into windmills at the last moment.

The proud knight’s stubborn defiance is comical. Yet, one cannot help feeling affection for this noble-hearted idealist, driven by an unwavering faith in his dreams.

Kozo Tashima, former president of the Japan Football Association, has announced his intention to run for president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.

The incumbent, Gianni Infantino, is seeking a fourth term. He has his critics, but no shortage of supporters either.

Tashima, now the JFA’s honorary president, once joked that running for the post would make him “a Don Quixote.”

Now, he says he is ready to take up the challenge, hoping to restore FIFA to an organization worthy of being called fair.

There is no denying that much of what FIFA does these days raises eyebrows. A particularly troubling example was its controversial decision to suspend a one-match ban imposed on a U.S. national team player during the 2026 World Cup.

To this day, there has been no satisfactory explanation of the role played by U.S. President Donald Trump, who personally contacted Infantino to request a review of the case. The whole affair remains deeply murky.

Sancho Panza was fond of quoting proverbs, so let me follow his example.

The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) wrote in “A Writer’s Diary” that he knew of no higher praise than to compare someone to Don Quixote.

He also described Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece as “the most bitter irony that a man is capable of expressing.”

Will Tashima become a Don Quixote? Can he even live up to the name?

But perhaps the real question lies elsewhere: Is Infantino a windmill, or a giant?

—The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 11

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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