A Losing Bonus Point in Cardiff: Japan Score Three Tries and Still Fall 28-21 to Wales
Japan left the Principality Stadium with something to take home and something to regret. On Saturday Wales beat Eddie Jones’s side 28-21 in the Nations Championship, but a late try by replacement scrum-half Kenta Fukuda earned the visitors a losing bonus point and set up a frantic finish that the hosts only just survived.
Wales led 21-14 at half-time after tries from prop Archie Griffin, wing Josh Adams and Louis Rees-Zammit, who was named player of the match. Japan answered through flanker Ben Gunter and lock and co-captain Warner Dearns. Adams added a second try after the break before Fukuda’s score brought Japan back within seven points. Adams then won a turnover penalty that helped Wales close out the game. Sam Costelow kicked three conversions for Wales; Naoto Saito kicked two for Japan and Semisi Komura added one.
The match drew 52,425 spectators — about 2,000 more than Wales’s opening autumn fixture against Argentina last November, but 9,000 fewer than the crowd that watched these two sides in Cardiff in 2025. For head coach Steve Tandy it was a fourth win in 13 Tests, and another tight result against Japan after a last-gasp one-point victory twelve months earlier.
Jones handed a debut to fly-half Riku Kitahara, pairing him at half-back with co-captain Saito, after Ryunosuke Ito was unavailable because of university commitments in Japan. Gunter’s try came after Japan turned over a Welsh breakdown and the flanker outflanked the cover; Dearns dived over to level again after more Welsh ill-discipline. Rees-Zammit started and finished the move for his first try in eight internationals just before the interval.
Wales stay fifth in the northern-hemisphere table. They had begun the tournament with a home win over Fiji and defeats in Argentina and South Africa; Japan had beaten Italy but lost to Ireland and France. Wales next host New Zealand, then Australia; Japan travel to face England and Scotland. If the tables do not change, the two sides could meet again in a fifth-place play-off at Twickenham at the end of November. Three tries in Cardiff were not enough to win. They were enough to keep Japan in the conversation.