For the rest of the day, about half of the year group will put in another six hours of tireless gaming, punctuated with meticulous discussion of strategy and tutorials on mental preparedness techniques. Their student peers — equally passionate about games, but less able to click a mouse at a competitive pace of five times a second — will immerse themselves in the theorems of game analysis, commentary broadcasting, cheat-detection and event management. This is how Ivy Leagues are born. By the time competitive video gaming and all the associated razzmatazz becomes a $1bn global industry (in about two years’ time, according to some estimates), Tokyo’s Jikei Gakuen may already think of itself as a venerable seat of “e-sports” learning.

At one level, the founding of Japan’s first e-sports academy fits comfortably (if eccentrically) into the breathless evolution narrative of professional gaming and the increasingly lucrative market in which it thrives. Through a decade of economic and technological waves — powerfully amplified by social media — the competitive playing of online games like League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 has become a global spectator sport with an active audience estimated at 400m and total revenues of about $650m.

As the implications of those numbers have sunk in, mainstream television networks and the marketing departments of major brands have taken note — particularly of e-sports’ historic grip over South Korea and its rapid advance into China and Southeast Asia. Sponsorship deals have become bigger, the prize pots for the largest tournaments have swollen to well over $2m. A few US universities have started offering partial scholarships for promising stars. Loose organiser associations are scrambling to become serious global governing bodies. Millionaire e-sporting heroes are emerging, along with international fanbases, doping scandals and PR teams. It is all rather impressive for a discipline whose proponents hit their peak at 24 and are often burnt out two years later.

And for Jikei Gakuen, the timing looks decidedly smart. The first ever intake to the e-sports college was a 40-strong group who joined a year ago and will graduate in March 2018. The second year in operation saw 60 students sign up, and the college is now planning to open a second campus in Osaka for dozens more.

But hidden beneath the euphoric roar of novelty is a more melancholy thrum. For all of its look-at-me charge into a bold new arena, the establishment of Japan’s first e-sports school is fundamentally defensive. It is there, says its founder, to prevent Japan falling behind. E-sports is emerging as an exciting global industry and Japan, which once brought video games to the world, is almost nowhere to be seen. That is not through any shortage of exceptionally focused youngsters capable of downing endless caffeine drinks and playing games for the 11 hours a day recommended by the world’s greatest pro-gamers. The problem is that the potential pool of Japanese pro-gaming talent tends not to play the same games as the rest of the world and favours consoles over PCs — a fact that didn’t matter a jot until there was a $1bn e-sports industry based overwhelmingly on PC games.

The e-sports school is an attempt to prevent a Galápagos generation of gamers cutting themselves off from a lucrative market. It is never too soon to establish world-class aspirations, says the Jikei Gakuen head: “Why is Brazil good at football? Because children start playing aged three. We do that with video games, but we need to think about global markets. Japan has so much potential.”