While Better Loosen Up is seen as Australia's benchmark performer in Japan, Opal Orchid and Midfarm are two silent achievers of the thoroughbred industry that are well overdue for recognition as major international race winners.
Opal Orchid and Midfarm are both on the honour roll of winners of the Tenno Sho, a race first run in Japan in 1905 to honour the Meiji Emperor. It is considered so prestigious that it has two different versions, the spring and autumn Tenno Sho. They are both ranked among the richest 12 races in the world.
When Better Loosen Up won the 1990 Group I Japan Cup, his fighting victory was acclaimed a pioneering achievement by an Australian-bred horse and with the financial rewards a huge incentive for further raids into Japan's lucrative racing calendar. 
Only a handful of such undertakings have followed in the meantime, with the most notable Takeover Target's win in the 2006 Group I Sprinters' Stakes (1200m).
Acknowledgement is also due to Kinshasa No Kiseki, a son of Fuji Kiseki which was foaled in Australia and exported to race in Japan where his 11 career wins included two runnings of Japan's only other Group I sprint, the Takamatsunomiya Kinen (1200m) in 2010 and 2011.
Japan has balanced the books with reverse raids to scoop a quinella in the 2006 Group I Melbourne Cup with Delta Blues and Pop Rock and Admire Rakti in the 2014 Group I Caulfield Cup. Hana's Goal won the 2014 All-Aged Stakes and Real Impact collected the Group I 2015 George Ryder Stakes.
The Japan Racing Association's timeline for the industry begins in 1862 when the first western-style horse races were staged by foreign residents of Yokahama.
The JRA also documents the importation of 14 horses from Australia in 1895, a shipment that most likely had a bit to do with increasing the thoroughbred horse population there.
A century after this event, Japan exploded as a global force in breeding and racing - a turnaround made possible through substantial investment in securing the world's best bloodlines, and notably the breed-shaping stallion Sunday Silence, who would lead the sires' championships in 13 seasons.
The two editions of the Tenno Sho, popularly referred to as the Emperor's Cup, were initially run at different centres and over a variety of distances. A change came in 1983 for the spring version to be locked in at 3200 metres at Kyoto to be the nation's staying championship while the autumn version was set at 2000 metres on Tokyo's Fuchu racetrack to accommodate the best three-year-olds taking on older horses.
Opal Orchid and Midfarm, the Australian exports to Japan, can be found on the Tenno Sho's roll of honour for 1954 and 1956, respectively.
Prizemoney in Japan at that time was quite insignificant to the staggering amount that is available today and the Australian-bred pair ran in the Tenno Sho when total prizemoney was equivalent to $17,860 - the Melbourne Cup of the same years carried $31,000 in total prizemoney.
When Gold Ship outstayed subsequent Melbourne Cup favourite Fame Game in the 2015 Tenno Sho (spring) in   May, the race carried prizemoney of Yen313 million ($3,543,640) which puts it, with the Tenno Sho (autumn), in equal fourth place on the list of Japan's richest races. The $7.064m Japan Cup is number one.
The minimum details available through the Japan Racing Association show Opal Orchid winning the 1954 Tenno Sho by a margin of 2 1/2 lengths, carrying 56kg in a time of 3min 32.2sec, while Midfarm carried 58kg to win by 1 1/4 lengths with the slow time of 3min 32.2 sec, suggesting the track was rain-affected.
Opal Orchid was a chestnut mare of 1950, bred by Mrs E.R. Basche of NSW. She was by Macarthur, a stout son of British-bred miler Marconigram and noted as the sire of Mac, winner of the 1959 Adelaide Cup and 1960 Moonee Valley Cup.
Opal Orchid's mother, Bronze Orchid, was by Hall Mark, the best son of seven-times champion sire Heroic. Hall Mark in the spring of 1933 won the AJC Derby, Victoria Derby and Melbourne Cup.
Gladioli, the dam of Bronze Orchid, was also the mother of the Heroic colt Hua which won the 1937 VRC Sires' Produce Stakes-Victoria Derby double. Gladioli, in turn, was a grand-daughter of the exceptional New Zealand mare Gladsome, whose win record includes 11 races in New Zealand and Australia which are today rated as Group I events.
The JRA database has Opal Orchid winning four times and placing once in nine starts in 1954-55 and credits her having produced five foals between 1956 and 1967.
Midfarm, bred on Percy Miller's famed Kia Ora Stud at Scone, NSW, was a bay horse of 1951 by Midstream - three times the leading sire in the second half of the 1940s - from Farmington, a British import by Colombo and whose grand-dam Glenabatrick was the mother of 1935 Ascot Gold Cup winner Tiberius.
Glenabatrick's third dam was Sceptre, the incomparable British filly of 1902 when she won the English 1000 and 2000 Guineas, the English Oaks, English St Leger and St James's Palace Stakes.The JRA lists Midfarm racing 18 times over three years for 11 wins and four placings, with earnings at today's exchange rate worth just $67,640. Midfarm's only entry in the Japan Stud Book credits him covering 11 mares in 1958 but with no further details.