 Japan lost to England A last month |
Japan have named four New Zealanders among their squad for October's Rugby World Cup in Australia. Stand-off Andrew Miller, centres Reuben Parkinson and George Konia, and lock Adam Parker have been selected by the Japan Rugby Football Union.
A miserable run of results has seen Japan lose three matches against Australian club teams, as well as going down to the United States and England A.
They will not play again until the World Cup, where they face Scotland, France, Fiji and the US, again, in Pool B.
"We played enough tune-up games, more games than we did last year," said JRFU spokesman Hiroaki Shukuzawa.
"It is not a problem how many games we played in preparation. The problem is we didn't get a good result.
"Before the previous World Cups, we played tune-up matches against Hong Kong and Spain, but I'm not sure whether it was a good preparation or bad.
"We decided that it would be better to improve through practice what was revealed as our weakness in these tune-up games."
Japan squad
Head coach: Shogo Mukai
Backs: Yuji Sonoda (Kobe Steel), Takashi Tsuji (NEC), Andrew Miller (Kobe Steel), Keiji Hirose (Toyota Motor), Toru Kurihara (Suntory), Hirotoki Onozawa (Suntory) Yukio Motoki (Kobe Steel), Reuben Parkinson (Sanix), Hideki Namba (Toyota Motor), George Konia (NEC), Daisuke Ohata (Montferrand/FRA), Junichi Hojyo (Suntory), Tsutomu Matsuda (Toshiba Fuchu), Takashi Yoshida (Suntory)
Forwards: Shin Hasegawa (Suntory), Masahito Yamamoto (Toyota Motor), Masaaki Sakata (Suntory), Masao Amino (NEC), Masahiko Toyoyama (Toyota Motor), Ryo Yamamura (Kanto Gakuin University), Koichi Kubo (Yamaha Motor), Hajime Kiso (Yamaha Motor), Hiroyuki Tanuma (Richo), Adam Parker (Toshiba Fuchu), Yasunori Watanabe (Toshiba Fuchu), Naoya Okubo (Suntory), Takuro Miuchi (capt/NEC), Ryota Asano (NEC), Takeomi Ito (Kobe Steel), Yuya Saito (Colomiers/FRA)
MMIX
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