A new documentary called No Packers, No Life is coming to theaters in Wisconsin this month. It follows the “Japanese Packers Cheering Team” — a group of hardcore Green Bay Packers fans in Japan. In the film, the Japanese fans cheer on the Packers at watch parties and travel to Lambeau twice.
WUWM spoke with two members of the Cheering Team: Takashi "Cheppo" Kawarazaki and “Mak” or Makoto Koshi, along with entrepreneur and filmmaker Ty Morse.
It was 3:20 a.m. in Japan when Mak and Cheppo spoke with WUWM. “They woke up especially for this,” says Morse. “Although I should say that they are used to these off-hour times because they will watch live Packer games at different times.”
“It’s early morning usually for them,” Morse laughs.
Cheppo first saw the Packers in 1993 on Japan's national broadcasting channel. He immediately thought, “Brett Favre is a very good player."
"So, I became a Green Bay Packers fan,” he says.
Mak is a TV sports commentator. “Yes, [Mak is] very famous among our Japanese football fans,” says Cheppo. As a color commentator, Mak says he’s expected to be neutral. But he, too, became enamored with Favre’s playing in the 1995 season. “Then I started confessing I’m a Packers fan,” he says, adding that he’d only tell his friends.
The rest is history, and some of it can be seen in No Packers, No Life. The film will debut on Oct. 17 in Marcus Theaters throughout southeastern Wisconsin, along with Green Bay, Madison, La Crosse and Gurnee, Illinois.
There’s an Oct. 15 premiere at the Marcus Majestic Theatre in Brookfield.
The movie follows the group’s “homecoming” of sorts on two different trips to Green Bay’s Lambeau Field in 2017 and again in 2019, during the winter. It also depicts the first interaction Morse ever had with the Japanese Packers Cheering Team, which he stumbled upon during a work trip in Japan.
“Having gone to Japan literally over 100 times, never having seen a Packers jersey, the randomness [of the encounter]. And again, in Tokyo, you're talking about 40 million people. On any given street, there’s 50 to 100 bars. So, the fact that on this one block at this time, they were standing there, inside the same place I went into was just insane. And I was just caught up in the moment of how on earth did I stumble across this massive group of Packer fans?”
Some iterations of the cheering team have come to Green Bay for a third game, meaning there have been three total trips and cultural exchanges between Japan and Green Bay now. The Packers have won each of those times. So, you could say the Japanese Cheering Team is 3-0.
