On 11 January 2008, Shibuya Channel’s People | Close-Up series interviewed Marco, center figure of freestyle football team 球舞 (Kyubu) — then in year two as a “show” unit rather than a solo side project.
Year one had been mostly Marco alone. Year two brought members and staff, and a style built to be watched: individual tricks plus group linkage, with MC Ak☆ mixing djembe and mic work into a format the piece called hard to copy.
Borderless promotion
Early outreach included freestyle manuals and videos, commercial spots, and even an unrelated late-night gokon TV appearance just to put freestyle football on air. By interview time, magazine and sports-press coverage was stacking, and event requests were arriving from inside and outside Japan.
Shibuya as stage and pause
Performance work often pulled them to O-EAST and clubs — Shibuya as an information-broadcast district they wanted to eventually program themselves. Offstage, Marco found the ward “too many people to settle down,” and named Wired Cafe on Shibuya TSUTAYA 6F as a place to breathe.
Ambition stayed blunt: contribute to Japanese football, break the stereotype that Japanese players are weak on the ball, and hope kids who watch the act pick up a ball — then, someday, a World Cup win. Longer plans included schools, fashion, and even wire-suspended aerial play.
Product note from the page
A Kyubu original DVD provisionally titled FOOTBALL IS AxRxT!! was slated for late May that year, meant to capture performance and lifestyle without leaning on a sponsor first — “make football into art” as stance, not slogan.
The same live-house belt still empties into the scramble you can watch on the Shibuya Crossing live camera. Archive sports culture and today’s feeds meet in how to watch Japan live.
