Water Polo - Team Japan

General
The Japanese men's water polo team are making their ninth Olympic appearance in 2020, having qualified for Tokyo as host nation. They competed at four Olympic Games in a row from 1960 to 1972, but have only participated in two editions of the Games since, in 1984 and 2016. They were unable to win a match at the Rio de Janeiro Games, finishing bottom of their group.

Japan recorded their highest world championship finish in 2017, when they ranked 10th. At the 2019 World Championships in Gwangju, the team qualified for the knockout round where they were defeated by eventual silver medallists Spain. That result was followed by defeat to Montenegro in the classification round, before Japan finished the tournament with victory over South Africa in the 11th-place playoff.

Japan have long been among the best Asian teams and regularly finish on the podium at the Asian Games and Asian championship. They have won four Asian Games gold medals, which all came in consecutive tournaments between 1958 and 1970, and they have claimed silver or bronze at all but one of the Games in which they have competed since. Their results have been similar at the Asian championship, with Japan generally taking silver and bronze medals, but the trend changed in 2016 when they claimed their first continental title by beating Kazakhstan 7-6 in the final in Tokyo.