Major honours
Japan is the country that overturned the sport's entire equipment landscape. At the 1952 World Championships in Bombay, the largely unknown Hiroji Satoh won the men's singles with a racket carrying a thick sponge layer, ending the hardbat era in a single tournament, and through the 1950s and 1960s Japan built seven Swaythling Cups and eight Corbillon Cups, shifting the sport's center of gravity from Europe to Asia. Ichiro Ogimura and Toshiaki Tanaka split the men's singles titles between them, and the women's team produced seven world champions between 1956 and 1969. After a long slump once China rose, Japan rebuilt its early-talent and academy system in the 2000s and launched the T.League in 2018 to climb back. At Tokyo 2020, Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito won mixed doubles gold, breaking China's Olympic monopoly for the first time, and Japan's six Olympic team medals accumulated since 2008 are the most after China's. Its combined men's and women's World Championship singles titles stand at 16.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
Japan shared the world summit with China through the 1950s and 1960s and remains the country that most often gives China a genuine contest today. Against South Korea it has fought for second place in Asia for more than half a century.