Swimming - Team Japan

General
Japan have won silver at every edition of the Asian Games to feature the women's 4x200m freestyle relay. They finished behind the People's Republic of China at each of the six Games between 1998 and 2018.

The Japanese team's fourth-place finish at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta remains their best Olympic performance. They failed to qualify for the Olympic final for the first time in five appearances as hosts of the 2020 Games in Tokyo, finishing with the ninth-fastest time in the heats.

At the world championships, Japan claimed their one and only medal to date in front of a home crowd in 2001 in Fukuoka. Having originally finished fifth, they were promoted to the bronze medal position after the first and second-placed finishers, Australia and the United States of America, were disqualified. They have failed to reach the world championship final only three times since then, although one of those was at the 2023 edition of the tournament in Fukuoka.