NJPW: Fans outside of Japan need to accept what they get

Many foreign fans found themselves with less than desirable tickets for Wrestle Kingdom in January. Some jumped to accuse New Japan of treating their overseas fan base unfairly, but did they really? If you didn’t get the Wrestle Kingdom tickets you wanted, I’m sorry – but I’m not THAT sorry.

With a larger-than-ever Wrestle Kingdom poised to rock the Tokyo Dome this January, it should come as no surprise that demand for tickets was at an all-time high. For some fans, though, their New Year dreams were dashed (see what I did there?) when the results of the Wrestle Kingdom ticket lottery came through.

To get the full breadth of the situation, though, let’s start at the beginning.

New Japan offers tickets to NJPW Fan Club members in a special lottery before tickets go on sale to the general public. The lottery is a bizarre little system that I participated in for last year’s Wrestle Kingdom, and I’ll break down the steps here:

1. Sign up for an NJPW Fan Club account.*
2. When the lottery begins, log in to the ticket website.
3. Select your desired sections (not specific seats) – last year you were able to make two choices. We selected Arena A as our first choice and Arena B for our second choice.
4. Wait. Wait for what seems like an agonizingly long amount of time.
5. Receive the results of the lottery! This is where you find out which tickets you’ve won.

There’s a big asterisk at step #1 above. That’s because, to be a member of the NJPW Fan Club, you need to be a resident of Japan. So, how did I participate – and how have other foreigners participated – in lottery presales before?

Maybe you have an uncle or a friend who lives in Japan and you can use their address when signing up for your NJPW Fan Club account. More likely, though, you use a third-party service to act as an intermediary. They provide you with an address which you use to sign up for your Fan Club account.

This is where all of your Fan Club stuff goes first. NJPW will send all of your Fan Club goodies to that address, and they’ll mail it to you for a fee. When it works, it’s great! And it did work for me.

Last year I was privy to all sorts of fun little treasures like a delightful little magazine with Tetsuya Naito dressed up as a handsome detective and an official membership card. I even got an email once about some kind of training seminar with Hiroyoshi Tenzan. Oh, to actually live in Japan.

That last sentence right there is the kicker – to actually live in Japan. Last year, when I purchased my Fan Club membership through a third-party service, I didn’t live in Japan. I was pretending. I, like many others, used a somewhat shady workaround to get early access to wrestling tickets.

The service I used made the entire process so easy. They were helpful, knowledgeable, and provided assistance and instructions at every step of the way. It was comforting knowing exactly what to expect when dealing with such a weird ticket buying experience for the first time.

I didn’t try to get tickets to Wrestle Kingdom this year. It was our big vacation last year, and we weren’t going to do Japan twice in a row. If we had decided to go back, though, we certainly would have used the same service to try to get tickets to at least one night in the Dome.

If we failed or didn’t get the tickets we wanted? Well… how mad could I reasonably be?

From different accounts I’ve read, it sounds like non-residents were shut out of tickets on the floor, but did receive tickets in section 1F, the first set of seats off of the floor. If New Japan somehow figured out who was a real resident and who wasn’t and then gave priority to real residents who weren’t scamming the system, who could blame them?

When you use a third-party good or service, you have to accept that it comes with certain risks.

I don’t use third-party batteries in my expensive camera because I read too many reviews of third-party batteries providing a poor, or dangerous, experience compared to using the batteries made by my camera’s manufacturer.

If I used weird batteries and my camera melted as a result, the manufacturer of my camera would have no obligation to refund me – they told me, in the manual, to only use their batteries!

“They don’t have a place for foreigners because they don’t normally have foreigners in the system.” – Kris Wolf, VICELAND’s The Wrestlers

It’s the same general idea as the NJPW Fan Club and the ticket lottery. When you sign up for the Fan Club, you and New Japan enter into an agreement – you agree that you are a true resident and they agree to give you special deals for being a true resident and member of their club.

For many Fan Club members, that agreement was broken instantly when you (myself included) used a third-party to fake an address.

New Japan is not responsible for shady behavior regardless of how badly you want to see SANADA beat Okada for the IWGP Heavyweight Title on January 4 (let me have my dreams, okay?).

If they were able to figure out how to separate real residents from fake residents and you, a fake resident, still got tickets then you should feel lucky. If you didn’t, then you should understand that you broke the rules and need to accept that fact.

There also needs to be a tacit understanding of the third-party service, and its relationship to New Japan. There is no relationship. That’s why it’s a third-party service.

New Japan doesn’t charge extra to enter the lottery – you get in based on your NJPW Fan Club membership fee which also includes other bonuses. You have to understand that when you scam the system, regardless of whether or not you think the system is just, you are subject to whatever actions they deem necessary to be taken against you.

Speaking specifically as an American, it’s mind-boggling to think of how entitled and privileged we are as a culture. We want everything delivered to us in a nice package, and will throw a fit when that isn’t the case (full disclosure: I have thrown a fit about stuff before).

If, as an American, your favorite wrestling promotion or sports team had a fan club for residents in your city, state, or country and you were able to benefit from whatever that fan club offered, you wouldn’t bat an eyelash. You wouldn’t feel bad for anybody else.

To say you would is to offer up the sourest of grapes because you missed out on something you wanted for the same reason.

The differences between American and Japanese culture, as I’ve personally experienced them, can be pretty astounding. From the oodles of research I did before our vacation last year and our actual experiences in Tokyo, everything seems aimed at making life easier for the people who live there.

People are endlessly polite and want every experience to be as pleasant as possible. Even the public transportation is easy and delightful to use (take notes, New York). I’m speaking in broad strokes here – I’m sure there are negative experiences to be had all over the place.

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In America, though, it’s all about a “me” culture where we want, and expect, everything for ourselves without having to really work for it. When we find ourselves with an advantage over someone else, it’s good because we deserve it and they don’t.

When we find ourselves on the opposite end of that situation, we’re furious because it’s just not fair. We’re a terrible human roller coaster of drama and pettiness.

Japanese culture is not really geared toward foreigners. They don’t cater to foreigners as other countries do.

As Kris Wolf put it in VICELAND’s The Wrestlers, “It’s really hard for a foreigner to live here and feel accepted. I don’t feel like I have a place here, and I don’t think it’s because it’s malicious or anything. They don’t have a place for foreigners because they don’t normally have foreigners in the system.”

Could New Japan, the company, make a change to cater to foreigners on Japanese soil in the future? Maybe. But they’ve only been driving hard for Western fans over the last several years and have been around as a business since 1972. Those changes take time and logistics, plus changing an entire tradition of treating your homegrown fans to special deals and treats.

Let’s not ignore the fact that New Japan is in the midst of its most ambitious expansion efforts in history with the G1 Climax event coming stateside for the first time ever alongside other events in the United States, England, and Australia this year.

Plus, for Wrestle Kingdom, there is an official presale for international fans (and only international fans) happening July 8-July 10 without having to try and work around the Fan Club system.

New Japan’s foreign fans are being catered to and served, but we can’t expect everything to be perfectly tailored to us.

NJPW’s Japanese fan base has sustained them for nearly 50 years and still deserves the benefits that come from rooting for their home team.

As for me, I’m just a big dumb American foreigner who loves wrestling and wants to experience it anywhere and everywhere. I’ll take what I can get and accept that not every other country’s culture and business practices align with my own.

But above all else: Go Ace!