Japan walks into 2026 as the team that beat Germany and Spain at the same World Cup and still went home in the Round of 16. That is the entire story of modern Japanese soccer in one sentence: a national team that has clearly figured out how to play a top European side in a one-off match, and has not yet figured out how to do it twice in a row when the stakes are highest.
Hajime Moriyasu — soft-spoken, methodical, the longest-tenured manager in Japanese national team history — gets to try again. The squad is the most talented Japan has ever produced. Mitoma's hamstring injury was a blow, but Keito Nakamura — the Stade Reims winger who led Ligue 2 in scoring — steps in on the left, with Kubo on the right and Kamada in midfield. Tanaka pulling strings at Leeds. A defense built around Tomiyasu when he's fit and Endo when he plays. A goalkeeper situation that Moriyasu still hasn't quite settled. They qualified out of Asia without losing a match.
The 2022 storyline was the comebacks — down a goal to Germany, then scoring twice in eight minutes; down to Spain, same trick. They proved they belong on this stage. The 2026 question is whether they can finally win the second knockout match — the one Japanese soccer has been chasing since 2002, when Asia's only modern semifinalists were South Korea, on home soil. Group B with Spain and Brazil and Iran will not make it easy.
Week 1 Update: Japan drew the Netherlands 2-2 in a match that felt like a preview of something bigger. Two goals down, two goals back — the exact kind of comeback Japan has been doing to top European sides since Qatar. The pattern is no longer a surprise; it's a system. A point off the group favorites is exactly the start Moriyasu needed.
Matchday 2 Update: Four-nil against Tunisia in the 1,000th match in World Cup history, and Japan made it look like a training exercise. Moriyasu's system isn't a surprise anymore — it's a machine, and nobody in Group F has found the off switch. The team that clawed back from 2-0 down against the Netherlands just dismantled Tunisia without conceding a shot that mattered. Four points, knockout round all but secured, and the only question left is the one that's haunted Japanese football for two decades: can they finally break through the quarterfinal wall?
Matchday 3 Update: Japan 1, Sweden 1 — five points, second in Group F, and the Samurai Blue are through to the knockouts with a draw that felt like a choice. Moriyasu's side drew the Netherlands, demolished Tunisia, and held Sweden to a point without ever looking troubled. The system works. The quarterfinal wall remains the question — but this team has proven it belongs at this level. Now can it win when it matters most?
Round of 32 (June 29): Japan 1, Brazil 2 — and the question about winning when it matters most has an answer, and it is not the one Japan wanted. They led 1-0 through Kaishu Sano's 29th-minute strike, the kind of goal that had a billion people believing. But Brazil found Casemiro in the 56th minute and then Martinelli in the 90th plus five, and Japan's tournament ended in the cruellest way — with a team that competed fully and ran out of time. Moriyasu's side matched the five-time champions for an hour. The quarterfinal wall remains unbroken. Japan are eliminated.
A 25-year-old left winger at Stade Reims who stayed loyal when the club dropped to Ligue 2 — and responded by leading the team in scoring with 14 goals in 29 matches, cutting inside on his right foot with the kind of directness that makes defenders look like they're standing in mud. Quick, aggressive, built for tournament football where you get one chance and 45 seconds to do something with it.
Born in Kawasaki the same year as Mitoma. Won the MVP at a Barcelona youth camp at age eight, moved to La Masia at ten, was famously released when FIFA caught Barça violating youth-transfer rules. Returned to Japan, broke into the J-League at 15, eventually landed at Real Sociedad in 2022 where he's been their best player for three straight seasons. Plays right wing, cuts inside on his left, and has a 7+ rating average across La Liga this season — the kind of statistical consistency that suggests he's about to break out at this tournament.
From Hyōgo, made his name at Eintracht Frankfurt where he won the Europa League in 2022, now at Crystal Palace in the Premier League. Plays as the attacking-midfield link between Endo's defensive base and the Mitoma/Kubo wide threat — basically the player who makes the Japanese system actually function. With Wataru Endo missing recent camps for fitness reasons, Kamada is increasingly the most important midfielder in this team.
Sushi is the export, but the Japan you'd want to eat in Japan is ramen at midnight at a counter that seats nine: tonkotsu broth that's been simmering for 18 hours, a slick of fragrant oil, a soft-boiled egg with a jammy yolk, slices of pork belly that fall apart in the spoon. Then izakaya plates with a beer — yakitori (chicken thigh, scallion, the cartilage cuts the menu doesn't translate), karaage fried chicken, agedashi tofu, edamame with sea salt. Nothing on the table is more than $9 and somehow you've spent two hours.
WAYA Japanese Izakaya on Gaston Avenue in East Dallas — a quiet residential block, the kind of place you walk past three times before finding. The ramen is the best in the city by most reckonings (the broth has the depth that comes from someone caring), and the small-plates menu reads like an actual Tokyo izakaya. For Plano, Yatai Ramen does the made-to-order bowls and serves a casual, family-friendly version of the same idea.
A soundtrack for the matches, the pregame, and the afterparty.
Japanese supporters are the politest, most organized, and most emotionally controlled fans you will ever sit near at a sporting event — and then they will absolutely lose their minds when Japan scores. The famous post-match ritual: every Japanese fan stays after the final whistle and picks up trash from their own section. The players do the same in the dressing room. It is the soccer experience of the same culture that produces shinkansen trains arriving on the second. Expect blue replica shirts in coordinated rows, drumming that's surprisingly heavy when it gets going, and a "Nippon!" chant that builds for ten minutes before kickoff and doesn't stop until the whistle.
At the 2022 World Cup, Japan beat both Germany and Spain in the group stage and topped a group that contained two former champions. Then they lost to Croatia on penalties in the Round of 16. Their 'Doha miracle' is one of the great group-stage performances in tournament history — and they have still never won a World Cup knockout match.