PEEEEEEEEP! The ball is spilled forward and a predictable half is over.

37 mins. Lawrence has a bumping run midfield and offloads to Stuart who fires a delightful long pass on the run for Cunningham-South to feed Sleightholme. Seeing the cover coming across the winger prods a grubber in-goal that he chases and dives on.

Smith strikes a lovely conversion from out wide.

34 mins. Hello! From their own half Japan work it right via Riley who flies through a gap created by the England defensive rush. Once they are in behind he pops to Saito on a support line to race over and score.

The captain dusts himself off and converts his own try.

30 mins. The issue for Japan is that a knock-on means a scrum, and a scrum means a penalty against the visitors as soon as England apply the pressure and splinter their pack.

Another catch and drive from the lineout allow George to double his try tally.

23 mins. Two penalties given away from Japan in defence hand a 5m lineout to England. It’s a simple catch and drive for Jamie George to fall forward over the line from the back of the mail for another try.

Smith extends the lead with the conversion.

14 mins. A penalty for the home side is despatched to the corner. The lineout is won with very little fuss and two phases later Underhill puts his head down and forces over from a metre out to ground it one-handed.

Converted by Smith.

9 mins. The first bit of shape from England has Slade firing a kick in the left corner over the head of Osada, the ball is cleared to touch, but it simply invites the home side back at them. Smith calls a pattern off the lineout via an angled Lawrence run who finds Earl to go over under the posts. A very neat and tidy try.

Smith adds two.

4 mins. More poor discipline from England as Earl is caught not rolling away at a ruck forty metres out. The Japan captain fancies it but he pulls the attempt at the posts left.

Ref Craig Evans blasts on his whistle and Marcus Smith boots us underway

First choice all over the park for England of players who are available. Steve Borthwick wants a proper win here.

Japan are without Warner Dearns, who is banned for four matches. There’s also no Harumichi Tatekawa so Nik McCurran comes in at stand-off.

England: 1 Ellis Genge, 2 Jamie George (captain), 3 Will Stuart; 4 Maro Itoje, 5 George Martin; 6 Tom Curry, 7 Sam Underhill, 8 Ben Earl; 9 Jack van Poortvliet, 10 Marcus Smith; 11 Ollie Sleightholme, 12 Henry Slade, 13 Ollie Lawrence, 14 Tommy Freeman; 15 George Furbank.
Replacements: 16 Luke Cowan-Dickie, 17 Fin Baxter, 18 Asher Opoku-Fordjour, 19 Nick Isiekwe, 20 Chandler Cunningham-South; 21 Harry Randall, 22 Fin Smith, 23 Tom Roebuck.

Japan: 1 Takato Okabe, 2 Mamoru Harada, 3 Shuhei Takeuchi; 4 Sanaila Waqa, 5 Epineri Uluiviti; 6 Kanji Shimokawa, 7 Kazuki Himeno, 8 Faulua Makisi; 9 Naoto Saito (captain), 10 Nicholas McCurran; 11 Jone Naikabula, 12 Siosaia Fifita, 13 Dylan Riley, 14 Tomoki Osada; 15 Takuro Matsunaga.
Replacements: 16 Seunghyuk Lee, 17 Yukio Morikawa, 18 Keijiro Tamefusa, 19 Daichi Akiyama, 20 Tevita Tatafu, 21 Ben Gunter; 22 Shinobu Fujiwara, 23 Yusuke Kajimura.

So we reach the final chapter of England's current season of mists and mellow fruitlessness. An Autumn of testing themselves against the best of the southern hemisphere – plus Australia – and coming up short. Cue many pained dissections and death notices about the state of the game its birthplace, all of which are overstated.

Steve Borthwick’s team have had a tough little run of fixtures and have lost them narrowly, the team is broadly settled, the attacking gameplan is maturing and a new defensive system is bedding in. They should have won against Australia, probably, but this is no reason to go into full meltdown. Things are broadly fine and will continue to be so.

That said, it is helpful that they can sign-off this run of matches playing Japan at home with the clear probability of a comfortable win this brings; hence Borthwick has gone with a fully loaded squad for the match. But a decent and convincing win it must be against the returning Eddie Jones’s charges. A creaking November victory over the Brave Blossoms in 2018 during Jones’s England tenure increased the mutterings about his suitability for the job and England’s current man in charge will be keen to avoid yet another “explain yourself!” post-match interview to head into the long winter gap prior to the Six Nations.