Japan

South Korea sits across the court from Japan in a way few Asian rivalries do, and it produced its sharpest moments at the 1964 Olympics and in the 1997 FIBA Asia Cup final.

Japan's own basketball story starts earlier than most in Asia. The team took the floor for its first international game at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, the same year it joined FIBA, and went on to reach the Games eight times in total — when Japan did not return to the Olympics until Tokyo 2020. The 1936 tournament also produced the side's best Olympic placing, ninth.

Two FIBA Asia Cup titles, in 1965 and 1971, remain the team's peak on the continental stage. The breakthrough, when it came, arrived under Tom Hovasse. Hovasse took over the men's side in 2021 after guiding Japan's women to Olympic silver, and at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, which Japan co-hosted, he steered the team past Cape Verde and Venezuela into the Round of 16 — a run good enough to send Japan back to the Olympics in Paris the following year. Hovasse left the post in February 2024.

Rui Hachimura and Yuta Watanabe now carry the team's profile in the NBA. The side has no fixed home ground, moving between the Saitama Super Arena, which hosted basketball at the Tokyo Olympics, the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium and Okinawa Arena depending on the fixture.