A little over 18 months have passed since Karne Hesketh’s last-gasp try gave Japan a shock victory over South Africa at the last World Cup and sealed the country’s place in rugby history.

As Japan prepares to become the first Asian country to host the tournament, in 2019, the Brave Blossoms’ heroics on England’s south coast could not have come at a better moment for the game’s development in the region.

On Wednesday, Eddie Jones, Steve Hansen, Bill Beaumont and other luminaries of the game will gather in Kyoto to attend the draw for the 2019 tournament, which organisers have promised will “connect and engage a nation and the world through sport and friendship”.

The draw, to be held at the ancient capital’s state guesthouse, will give the tournament’s organisers a much-needed opportunity to lift rugby out of the sporting shadows, after a year dominated by preparations for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and signs that Japan’s apparent love affair with the sport could turn out to have been a mere fling.

The lacklustre build-up contrasts with the near hysteria that followed Japan’s 34-32 victory over the Springboks in September 2015.

As Japanese people woke to news of their compatriots’ feat on the other side of the world, rugby match reports made a rare appearance on the front pages of the Sunday papers. Most could barely comprehend how a team whose only other World Cup win had been against Zimbabwe in 1991 had upset the two-times world champions, albeit in front of a fiercely pro-Japan crowd at the Brighton Community Stadium.

Defeat by Scotland followed but 25 million Japanese – almost 20% of the country’s population – stayed up to watch their team beat Samoa in their third pool match, setting a Rugby World Cup TV viewing record.

Ayumu Goromaru, who contributed 24 of Japan’s 34 points against South Africa, was lauded as a national hero. A website offered parents tips on how to rear a future “Goro”, while fans flocked to a little-known temple in their thousands to see its Buddha recreating the fullback’s pre-kick “church steeple” hand gesture.

However, the early promise of a groundswell of grassroots support for Japan’s third sport (behind professional baseball and football) threatens to give way to apathy, even as organisers prepare to start the countdown to 2019.

“The problem is that hardcore rugby fans are really excited but the rest of the country isn’t,” says Rich Freeman, rugby correspondent for Kyodo News in Tokyo. “There could be huge numbers of visiting rugby fans spread out across Japan in 2019 but most people here are barely aware that the tournament is happening.”

Many rugby fans blame the unrelenting focus on the 2020 Olympics, preparations for which have been marked by scandals over everything from the official logo and soaring costs to the wisdom of using wood in the construction of a main stadium that is also supposed to host the Olympic flame.

Before becoming England coach Eddie Jones ensured Japan took the headlines in 2015 but wonders if the nation’s appetite for the sport will turn out to be short-lived. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

The hapless preparations for the Tokyo Games have also affected the World Cup’s centrepiece match: the abrupt cancellation of Zaha Hadid’s initial stadium design and the search for a replacement means the venue will not be ready in time to host the final on 2 November. That privilege will go to Yokohama, host of the 2002 football World Cup final.

Rugby’s struggle to establish itself in the Japanese sporting firmament has been complicated by Eddie Jones’s departure to coach England, the Tokyo-based Sunwolves’ travails in their debut season in Super Rugby and Goromaru’s struggle to rediscover at club level the international form that made the full-back rugby union’s highest-paid player.

“It was unfortunate that the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU) let slip a golden opportunity to make rugby one of the most popular sports in Japan, simply because it was disorganised,” says Tetsuo Jimbo, a 55-year-old and lifelong follower of Japanese rugby. “It allowed one of the best coaches in the world, as well as the most popular player on the team, Ayumu Goromaru, to leave Japan. It also failed to promote Super Rugby and as a result most Japanese barely know what it is.

“It’s fair to say that Goromaru was the symbol of rugby’s newly earned popularity in Japan and that symbol has been lost for more than a year.”

The draw, two-and-a-half years before the tournament, at least gives organisers ample time to market the best matches after the fixtures are paired with venues in November. And the prospects for sell-out crowds across all 12 venues – from Hokkaido in the far north to Kyushu in the south-west – look reasonable, given that 75% of Japan’s 127 million population live within an hour of a match venue.

“The pool draw is a major milestone as we count down to Rugby World Cup 2019 and it will stimulate public awareness and accelerate interest in, and attention for, the main event,” the organising committee CEO, Akira Shimazu, said.

Regardless of what Wednesday’s draw throws up for Japan – as a band-three seed, a group of death placing is a distinct possibility – the home side face an equally tough test if they are to avoid proving Jones’s theory that the country’s appetite for rugby, like its taste for new ranges of soft drinks, could turn out to be short-lived.

“Rugby needs more public exposure and better promotion,” Jimbo says. “When you think of how much professional football has done to promote itself, the JRFU’s efforts are minimal and pathetic.”

There is cause for optimism, though. More than 60,000 people have signed up for the JRFU’s supporters’ club since its launch in September, and this month the union, together with Asia Rugby and World Rugby, will launch the IMPACT Beyond programme, designed to attract a million new players across Asia by 2019.

The arrival of Japan’s professional Top League in 2003, along with its experience in hosting international sports events, means the infrastructure is in place, says Freeman, who has been writing about Japanese rugby for two decades. “But the worry is that JRFU officials will sit back and think the World Cup is a reward for everything they’ve done, when in fact it should be the start of an all-out effort to kick-start rugby in Asia.”