If you walk the Kumano Kodo, you’ll see it everywhere: a black crow with three legs, perched on shrine walls, amulets and signposts. This is Yatagarasu, the sacred messenger of the gods. Legend holds that when Japan’s first emperor, Jimmu, became hopelessly lost in the steep, fog-drowned Kii mountains, the sun goddess Amaterasu sent the three-legged crow to guide him safely through — making it, in effect, the original Kumano trail guide.
Here’s the quirky part. That same ancient crow now appears on the chest of Japan’s national football team. The link runs through Kakunosuke Nakamura, born near the Kumano shrines in 1878, who helped introduce football to Japan and is regarded as a founding father of the sport there. In tribute, the Japan Football Association adopted Yatagarasu as its emblem — and gave it a job to match: in the modern crest, the crow grips a football in its third talon, no longer guiding emperors through mountains, but guiding the ball into the back of the net.
