Many of us saw this coming some time ago.

As Ange Postecoglou began making more forays into Japan’s excellent J1 League, it was inevitable that some would begin to make faintly offensive points about Celtic’s ‘cultural identity’. Now that he has brought in the young South Korean striker Oh Hyeon-Gyu, the whispers have become a little louder.

One national newspaper recently made a dismissive reference to Postecoglou bringing in “half the Far East”. You’re tempted to describe this as racist but I don’t think it is. What it is, though, is thoughtless and a little insulting to the Japanese and South Korean players now in Celtic’s first-team squad. 

The manager made an important and typically eloquent point about this when he first sensed there was something distasteful about the tendency to refer to Celtic's Japanese players as the “Japanese contingent’ or the “boys from Japan”. 

Around this time last year, Postecoglou counselled us against merely treating his four Japanese players as some kind of uniform unit, indistinguishable from each other owing to their shared national and ethnic characteristics. 

“We have to be careful about just saying ‘four Japanese players’,” he said. “These are four individuals, they are totally different people. If you ever get the chance to meet them you will see they are totally different people, totally different kinds of players. It is lazy for all of us to say I have just brought in four Japanese.

"I have brought in four quality players, players who I think can add to what I am doing here. They are all totally different, they all have different personalities, they have had different careers so far and they offer something different to the club.

“The reason I went down that road, is, one, I have great knowledge of that market in that part of the world because that is where I have worked and, two, it is ideal for the January market because their season finishes in December.

"If we wanted to get players in early in the January window that is a good part of the world to do business. Don’t just assume 'they've brought in four Japanese players', we have brought in four quality players, all very different, who can all contribute.”

With the sole exception of the unlucky Yosuke Ideguchi, all of Celtic’s signings from Japan have been excellent. Kyogo is a lethal striker who possesses the speed and finishing instincts of Bobby Lennox and Reo Hatate reminds me of Lubo Moravcik in his vision, touch and ability to create space. Both of them are getting better with each passing week. 

Of those three, Daizen Maeda was perhaps the slowest starter. But as he’s begun to get more game time and after a World Cup when he excelled amongst the best in the world he has probably been Celtic’s best player since the five-week, pre-Christmas break. 

They have all made Celtic a formidable unit and you don’t need to have met them to know that each has their own personality with which they attempt to influence the game. They have been a joy to behold in the green and white hoops.

Celtic Way:

Their countryman, Yuki Kobayashi, made a fine debut at centre-back against St Mirren last week. Already he looks like the real deal and will strengthen the squad still further.

If you want to discuss any traits they might have in common you could consider their collective work-rate, their consummate professionalism and their outstanding discipline.

Occasionally, Kyogo drives me nuts by always inquiring after his opponent’s health after they’ve sustained a heavy challenge. But maybe that’s because I’m a cynical curmudgeon who has sadly lost what little sense of sportsmanship I ever possessed. 

I don’t recall any fuss being made of Rangers’ English contingent in the late 1980s which once amounted to almost an entire team. Or their acquisition of so many Dutch players a decade or so later.

In England in the 1970s teams like Leeds United and Manchester United carried significant Scots and Irish influences. Sad bastard that I am, I occasionally watch re-runs of ITV’s Big Match programmes from the 1970s and just the other week I counted eight Scottish and Irish players in the swashbuckling Manchester United starting XI in 1977-78. 

Of course nobody, not even in that unreconstructed decade, felt this was worthy of any comment. They were all seasoned pros and almost all experienced internationals. Their faces were all familiar to us. 

Celtic’s six Japanese and one South Korean are all seasoned professionals too and most are internationals. What’s more: they were reared in a country that long ago outstripped Scotland in the world rankings and which plays a brand of football far more sophisticated than what we’re used to seeing from our national team. 

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There are other less obvious benefits to having these players in and around Celtic Park. By the very fact of hailing from a different culture where different forms of personal conduct and manners are evident they can only have a positive influence on Celtic’s young academy players. Their levels of personal fitness (Kyogo and Maeda especially) will not have gone unnoticed around the Lennoxtown training complex. I’m informed that each has impressed their playing colleagues and Celtic’s wider staff members with their dedication and humility. 

It seems scarcely credible that, in the early decades of Celtic’s existence, some newspapers chose to depict their players and their fans as an underclass with the distinctive physical features that they thought this entailed. This stemmed from their ‘Irishness’ and reflected widespread social attitudes at all levels of Scottish society toward the Irish race. 

It’s why, ever since, Celtic have been open to all colours and cultures. All that matters is that they are deemed good enough to wear the hoops with pride. Nor should there be any bar – real or imagined – on how many players from one nationality get to play for the team. 

Celtic was forged in the flames of acute racial and religious discrimination and chose never to pursue either in their employment practices. 

Kyogo Furuhashi, Reo Hatate, Daizen Maeda, Yosuke Ideguchi, Yuki Kobayashi and Tomoki Iwata; it’s been a pleasure watching you all play for my team and it’s been rather wonderful witnessing the joy and pride you all obviously have in wearing the hoops. God bless you all.