Rating
73
Strong — top 15% · Glicko-2 1846 ±86
Record
20-0-30
40.0% of 50 matches in the last five years
Average margin
-4.3
27.0 for, 31.3 against
Home advantage
+15.2
Points per match better at home
Attack
+3%
27.0 scored per match, against the placed field's average
Defence
-14%
31.3 conceded per match; positive is fewer than average
- Head coach
- Eddie Jones
- Captain
- Michael Leitch
- Union
- Japan Rugby Football Union
- Emblem
- Sakura
- Home ground
- Japan National Stadium
- First match
- Japan 9–8 (Osaka, Japan; 31 January 1932)
- Most caps
- Hitoshi Ono (98)
- Leading scorer
- Ayumu Goromaru (708)
- Most tries
- Daisuke Ohata (69)
- World Cups
- 11, from 1987
- Best World Cup
- Quarter-finals (2019)
Anthem
君が代His Majesty’s Reign
Japanese (Hiragana and Kanji scripts) · 1870 (lyrics) · 0:59
Words
Recording and words from nationalanthems.info, used under CC BY 4.0.
From Wikipedia, read 2026-10-19. Not an input to any forecast — the rating does not know who is coaching.
Fiji2026-09-19 · home20–15won
USA2026-09-12 · home63–14won
Canada2026-09-05 · home57–12won
Australia2026-08-15 · away17–56lost- Australia2026-08-08 · home32–35lost
Newest first, from Japan's own point of view. Home and away are as the record stores them; a fixture the record does not mark neutral is listed as one side's home, which is right for a league round and wrong for a final played at a third ground.
Biggest win: 63-14 v USA
Heaviest defeat: 5-60 v Ireland
Strong — top 15%
Box is the middle half of the ranked field, line is the median, dot is Japan. The scale is this domain's own and does not compare across the two.
Teams that play alike sit close together. The two axes hold 72% of the variation between teams. Component 1 (42%) rises with more average margin and win rate. Component 2 (30%) rises with more high-scoring matches and margin swing.
27 of 66 teams sit too close together to name without covering another team's point, so they are drawn unlabelled. Every dot is still a link to that team, and hovering one names it.
Distance in the projection above, nearest first.