Nickname: The Samurais

How they qualified: 4th Place – 2022 Men’s Hockey Asia Cup

Notable honours: Olympic silver medallists (1932), 9th Place – Hockey World Cup (1971, 2006), Asian Games gold medallists (2018), Asian Games bronze medallists (1966, 1970), Asian Hockey Champions Trophy silver medallists (2013)

Rank in previous WC editions: 1971 – 9th, 1973 – 10th, 2002 – 12th, 2006 – 9th.

Making their first FIH Men’s World Cup appearance since Mönchengladbach 2006, Japan’s Samurais will be determined to remind everyone of their considerable talents.

At the delayed Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the 2018 Asian Games gold medallists proved themselves to be a fearsome attacking unit that was perhaps unfortunate to be eliminated in the competition pool phase. The team that competes in Odisha is considerably less experienced than the one that took to the Olympic turf in Tokyo, with 11 players having fewer than 50 caps and ten athletes being aged between 18 and 23. Thirty-year-old captain Seren Tanaka is one of six players to have surpassed the 100 caps marker, alongside goalkeeper Takashi Yohikawa, Shota Yamada, Masaki Ohashi, Hiromasa Ochiai and Koji Yamasaki, all of whom competed at Tokyo 2020.

Japan, who sealed their place at this FIH Men’s World Cup with a fourth-place finish at the 2022 Men’s Asia Cup, were recently in action at the FIH Hockey Men’s Nations Cup in South Africa, recording wins against Canada and Pakistan on their way to a sixth-place finish. The team is coached by Akira Takahashi, who represented Japan at the 2002 FIH Men’s World Cup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and, fascinatingly, was Head Coach of the Samurais four years later in Mönchengladbach.

One to watch: Koji Yamasaki. Top scored for Japan at the 2022 Men’s Hockey Asia Cup with six goals, netting against India and Korea as well as a claiming a four-goal haul against Indonesia.