World Cup 2010: Fourth time lucky as Japan look to progress from the group stage

At home in the leafy Kobe suburb of Ashiya, Hiroshi Kagawa is clearly unimpressed with the daily news features on safety in South Africa. "The only stories I told about running from trouble in Argentina and Mexico were back at the hotel afterwards," he recalls. "Of course, I probably wouldn't be able to escape so quickly these days."

Aged 85, Kagawa is one of the most celebrated and the oldest active sportswriter in Japan. A veteran of nine World Cups, ill health has sadly forced him to cancel his travel plans at the last minute and watch the finals unfold on television for the first time since 1970. His enthusiasm, however, has not been dented. It is with a smile that he chides some of his juniors in the domestic press for overshadowing the Japan squad's preparations with their negativity.

"For some reason, it has become very fashionable to criticise," he laughs. "The trouble is that no one has the courage to express a real opinion for fear of being the only one. You wonder if half of them don't just huddle together after press conferences and decide which comment to pick on next, because their articles are exactly the same. It's little wonder that [Japan's head coach Takeshi] Okada has become so prickly of late."

Not that Kagawa disagrees with all the complaints. Though Hidetoshi Nakata – the undisputed star of the Japan side at their three World Cup appearances to date – retired from football after Germany 2006, the present squad was supposed to be a more rounded vintage. Eighteen years of professional football since the J League was inaugurated in 1992 has at last left Okada with two decent players for every position. A first XI built around the creative talents of the former Celtic talisman Shunsuke Nakamura and 2009 Asian Footballer of the Year Yasuhito Endo swept through qualification for South Africa more than 12 months ago. Then it all began to go wrong.

"The biggest worry," says Kagawa, "is that Japan haven't made any progress at all in the last year. If anything, they've become a little worse. Endo looks tired and is clearly suffering from all his exertions over the past two seasons. Nakamura is nearly 32 now and edging closer to his sell-by date. These are the best two passers in the country, so for them both to be on the wane is a real problem."

If finishing third behind the surprise winners China and fierce rivals South Korea in February's East Asian Championship was an inauspicious start to 2010, Okada's second spell in charge of the national team reached its lowest ebb after April's friendly with Serbia: a visiting side consisting largely of domestically-based youngsters cruised to a 3-0 victory that revealed gaping flaws in a 4‑2‑3‑1 system designed to accommodate Japan's wealth of skilful midfielders. In particular, the pairing of Endo and Wolfsburg's Makoto Hasebe – neither of whose qualities scream 'anchorman' – had failed to link effectively with the attacking quartet while simultaneously leaving the back four horribly exposed.

Okada resembled a Premier League newcomer who had held true to the principles that won him promotion from the Championship and then suddenly come unstuck. His suggestion that a three-man defence might trump the variations on 4-3-3 preferred by Japan's Group E opponents shocked everyone who knows their Jonathan Wilson but even the logical addition of a proper defensive midfielder was naively slaughtered by domestic critics wrapped up in their own misconceptions of 'attacking' football. Caving in to the pressure, Okada watched an unchanged 4-2-3-1 get bullied off the park by South Korea again last month, before belatedly switching to 4-1-2-2-1 for a greatly improved display against England. "That," says Kagawa, "was closer to the kind of 'rhythmical' football that Japan will have to produce."

The criticism persists, but Kagawa and his colleagues are at least agreed that the exciting Keisuke Honda represents the key to this new system, and Japan's hopes in general. At 23, Honda is among the first generation to have grown up with the J League and in less than a year has emerged from the Dutch second division to trouble the likes of Sevilla and Internazionale in the Champions League. Since joining CSKA Moscow he has played across the midfield but Okada is considering using him at centre forward against Cameroon tomorrow to overcome Shinji Okazaki's loss of form and Japan's age-old issues with physical strength.

A last-ditch reshuffle would be quite a gamble – Honda had never once played up front until the practice match with Zimbabwe, which ended 0-0 – but the man himself insists that goals will come in South Africa. The supremely confident Osakan has already chastised his team-mates implicitly for "only caring about being the best in Japan", while his response to widespread derision surrounding Okada's infamous 'last four' target was to bluntly tell journalists he was there to win the tournament outright.

Kagawa is both sympathetic and realistic. "No manager will ever go into any tournament with the intention of losing. Remember, even the South Koreans in 2002 and Japan's 1968 Olympic side managed to reach the semi-finals. But we all know it would be a cause for true celebration if they could just make it past the first round. Japan need to be at their best to get points from any of the group games."

As for the competition as a whole? "They say that Africa was where mankind first originated and learned to walk on two feet – without which, we would never have created football. I think it is an enormous occasion within the evolution of our sport that the World Cup is coming to Africa for the first time, and I'm only sad I can't be there. It won't happen again. I might be 89 by 2014 but I'll charter my own plane to Brazil if I have to."