Japan U20

Japan's under-20 side does not carry a single unbroken history so much as a rotating roster, reassembled every two years by the Japan Football Association to match FIFA's age-category cycle. Its first fixture is on record: a 4–0 win over Singapore in Kuala Lumpur on 19 April 1959, part of qualifying for the old AFC Youth Championship. Shunsuke Nakamura played through that campaign and still holds the age-group appearance record, 25 caps between 1997 and 1999. Continental success came later and by the narrowest margin: the 2016 AFC U-20 Asian Cup, settled 5–3 on penalties against Saudi Arabia after ninety minutes without a goal.

The team trains at J-Green Sakai, the JFA's national centre in Osaka, but has no ground of its own; tournament matches are played wherever the fixture list sends it, from Ecopa Stadium to Saitama.

No fixture is watched more closely than the one against South Korea U-20.