Major honours
Japan is the country that turned volleyball into a national sport across Asia. Coach Hirofumi Daimatsu built the 'Oriental Witches' by carrying an entire textile-mill company team over to the national side, winning the 1962 Moscow World Championship before beating the Soviet Union 3-0 to win gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. The rolling receive, diving to dig a ball and rolling back up, became the symbol of a distinctly Japanese solution: making up for a height disadvantage through defense and relentless repetition. The women's team added World Championships in 1967 and 1974, Olympic gold at Montreal in 1976, and a World Cup in 1977, while the men won gold at the 1972 Munich Olympics. As world volleyball reoriented around power and height from the 1980s onward, Japan endured a long decline, but the V.League, launched in 1994, and its youth development system endured, and the men's national team reaching the quarterfinals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics for the first time in 29 years began to turn the tide.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The Soviet Union, faced consecutively at Tokyo 1964 and Mexico City 1968, was the original rival. Today, matches against South Korea remain the hottest fixture in Asian qualifying and the Asian Championship.