Japan’s Ito to miss Nations Championship to return to Uni rugby
Japan fly-half Ryunosuke Ito will miss the Nations Championship’s Northern Hemisphere stage to play for Meiji University in the Kanto University Intercollegiate Championship.
Ito, 21, made headlines in July when he made his Brave Blossoms debut as a student against Italy.
The fourth-year student pulled the strings in his first pro rugby game and now, with just seven caps to his name, has locked down Japan’s number 10 jersey in the absence of Kobe Steelers standout Lee Seung-sin.
Ito started in Japan's 100th anniversary game against Fiji on Saturday while his sister Chihiro 19, is in the Sakura 15 squad for their evening game against Wales and could win her first cap.
Australian journalist David Pembroke, a long-time adviser to Japan head coach Eddie Jones, revealed that the former England and Wallabies boss told him this week that Ito will miss the second stage of the Nations Championship.
Prop Sojiro Otsuka, 22, will return to Kwansei Gakuin University while 21-year-old utility-back Chisu Lee, who is set to make his debut off the bench against Fiji, will go back to Korea University in Osaka.
“Eddie told me that Ito, the electrifying university student playing at 10, Lee, the impressive centre and Otsuka, the loose-head, all three university players won’t be travelling to Europe for the Nations Championship,” said Pembroke on the Rugby Unity podcast (below).
“The have to go back to play for their university teams which tells you about the hierarchy of Japanese rugby."
Former Toyota Verblitz head coach Steve Hansen, who led the All Blacks to World Cup glory in 2015, said: “It’s different, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
Ex-Australia international Ewen McKenzie, a World Cup winner with the Wallabies in 1991, has had several stints coaching alongside Jones.
“That has to be tough for Ito, he’s just getting a taste of international rugby and while Japan will be in Europe, he’ll be back playing local footy basically,” said the former Wallabies head coach.
Jones has encountered this thorny issue during both of his tenures in charge of Japan with players who are still at university often having to stand-down from national team duty if requested.
Waseda University full-back Yoshitaka Yazaki, 22, is another example having been plucked from age-group domestic rugby to start for Japan against England in 2024.
A quick-thinking, twinkle-toed speedster, Yazaki, who lost the 62nd All Japan University Rugby Football Championship final to Ito’s Meiji side in January, trained with the Brumbies this year and has endured a run of injuries this season.
University rugby is the heartbeat of the Japanese rugby landscape and while Jones has publicly and internally appealed to senior figures at leading academic institutions to work with him for the good of the national team - players still largely remain unavailable to the former World Coach of The Year during the university season.
Yazaki, who scored his first Test try last year against South Africa, played two games for his country in the Nations Championship a year ago before withdrawing from their Autumn tour due to personal reasons.
Suntory Sungoliath-bound Ito, who should be a front-runner for the end-of-year World Rugby Breakthrough Player of The Year award, will now miss key games against Wales, England and New Zealand, a year from the World Cup.
Jones has bemoaned the lack of depth at fly-half for Japan and, with regular fly-half Lee still recovering from surgery, could be tempted to move Kobe full-back Shunsuke Uenobo to 10 or hand Black Rams playmaker Ichigo Nakakusu a recall next month.
While Japan complete their season in the UK, their latest crop of homegrown starlets in Ito, Otsuka and Lee will play in the country’s main university competition which traditionally runs from September to January.
Ito’s Meiji University has won all four of their games so far with a number of customary blow out wins including a 70-5 win against Aoyama Gakuin University and 99-5 stroll against Nippon Sport Science University last month.
Meiji will host Keio University on Sunday 1 October at Chichibunomiya Rugby Stadium in Tokyo.
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