Yuka Kanematsu: Japan’s accidental coach taking SVNS by storm

Shortly after her appointment as Japan women’s sevens head coach last August, Yuka Kanematsu gathered her coaching staff together for an important meeting.

Kanematsu told them three things that she was good at but perhaps more crucially, she then outlined where all her coaching blind spots lay. She then asked her colleagues to do the same.

By sharing their weaknesses as well as their strengths, she hoped that they would be able to fill in the gaps in their knowledge and experience.

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“And actually, it works a lot,” Kanematsu, who has led Japan to a breakthrough season on HSBC SVNS, tells RugbyPass.

“I felt that the team could unite stronger by showing their own strong points and weak points to each other.

“And then actually, that also reflects to the players, to the squad as well. They could round out knowing each other better, including their own strong points and weak points as well.

“That actually really worked, and I can see lots of the players now supporting each other to improve and to be stronger as a team, which is a great thing.”

Kanematsu is still in the infancy of her international coaching career, having led the Sakura Sevens into only four SVNS tournaments, but the early signs are extremely positive.

Ahead of the current season, her aim was to help Japan consistently compete in knockout rounds of World Series events, but targets and goals have had to be updated due to the team’s rise.

Japan have reached at least the quarter-finals of all four SVNS events this season and have taken a forward step at each one, culminating in a semi-final appearance in Vancouver at the end of February, which lifted the team to fifth in the overall standings.

“Our ultimate target is to get a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. It’s a very long-term target for us, but in the course of achieving that goal we would definitely like to challenge many times through SVNS because we are pretty sure that we will have more opportunities to challenge,” she says.

“As a national team it is our nature to aim for the higher status at every tournament. So, this time in Vancouver, our target was actually fourth in the rankings, and we made it.”

Kanematsu adds: “Our immediate target for the next tournament (in Hong Kong) will be third.”

Japan have been drawn in a tough-looking Pool C in Hong Kong, alongside Australia, Canada and Spain but given their success so far in 2025, you wouldn’t bet against them taking a step onto the podium on March 30.

Kanematsu deflects praise for the team’s performances – “it’s not about my own improvement” – but she is clearly confident in her and her coaching staff’s methods and abilities.

“I can feel that we are moving in the right direction to be better and stronger,” she says. “I’m not the type of head coach who does everything by myself.

“I also don’t think it’s worthwhile to compare myself to other head coaches. I believe that I can be the best coach that I can be.”

The mantra that has underpinned Japan’s SVNS campaign is ‘connection’, to the ball, to each other, the needs of the team, and both the past and future of Japanese rugby.

“The slogan was made up when we started with this new management team,” Kanematsu explains.

“By achieving our goal, we would like to connect many different people, as many as we can. So, while we would like to achieve our goal in terms of tournament results, we’d also like to achieve something further, to connect as many people as possible.”

It is one of the reasons that Kanematsu has been able to change the make-up of her tournament squads without seeing an impact on performance, providing players and staff with a sense of camaraderie.

Given the success that Kanematsu has had with Japan so far, it may come as a surprise that she fell into coaching almost by accident.

Despite representing Japan as a player on the World Series and at Rio 2016, Kanematsu had no intention of becoming a full-time coach until an injury presented an opportunity.

“I thought I was not the type for coaching,” Kanematsu admits.

“But one day after the Rio Olympics, the head coach of the Sakura Sevens, Keiko Asami, became head coach for our [Japan Women’s Sevens Youth] Academy team and when she got injured, there was an opportunity for me to help support her.

“That was the starting point for me as a coach. I really just wanted to help her coaching these academy players but since then I was given some opportunities to do more coaching.

“And then the very next year I became an assistant coach for the academy team and then since 2019, I became head coach, officially. And so, since I didn’t think that I would become a coach, I didn’t have any qualification to coach rugby.

“So, while I was coaching the academy, I was also studying to get the appropriate qualifications. So now I think that I’m lucky to have been able to have that opportunity to learn about coaching and at the same time to reflect those [lessons] on the field.”

Her resolve to continue that coaching journey was particularly strengthened by two subsequent achievements.

Firstly, in 2022, her young team won the Global Youth Sevens title in New Zealand, beating Australia 24-19 in the final.

“At that point I could believe that what I was doing was not wrong,” Kanematsu says. “It was correct to stick to.

“Still, I had some challenges at that stage too, how I should get over my own weaknesses. But since then I began to think that if I had anything I was weak about, I could rely on someone surrounding me, to share my weakness with others.

“It is the same with rugby sevens as well. You can’t do everything by yourself on the field.”

Two years later, Kanematsu was selected to be part of the Gallagher High Performance Academy, a programme delivered by World Rugby and Gallagher that aims to raise the number of female coaches working in the elite game.

Continuing her education alongside peers including Shannon Parry, Sarah McKenna and Patricia Garcia helped solidify a feeling that she “didn’t need to just follow male coaches, I could apply my own coaching style”.

“Now I have so many opportunities to meet [her fellow Gallagher HPA alumni] again, even in SVNS or other tournaments and we compete against each other,” Kanematsu adds.

“That was a really great moment for me, and I’m really glad to be able to meet them again as a coach.”

Kanematsu might not have envisaged a career in coaching when she was a player but if her journey continues on its current upward trajectory, there will be many more such memorable moments in her future.