No Asian team have ever beaten a South American side at the World Cup. Of the 10 encounters between the continents, South America have won eight times with two games drawn - North Korea v Chile 1-1 in 1966 and South Korea v Bolivia 0-0 in 1994.
However, Japan's flying form in the group stage this time around makes them strong candidates to break that jinx and qualify for the quarter-finals for the first time.
Japan, meanwhile, have been one of the tournament's delights with their free-flowing attacking style and set-piece mastery.
"For me, for the team, the next game is more important because we want to show the Japanese people that nothing is impossible," he said.
"They (Paraguay) will be trying everything on to rile us. Every goal is so much more precious now in this knockout stage and it is important we try to get our noses in front first," he told fifa.com. "One thing we will have to try and do is vary our set-pieces to surprise them."
"We're happy that we went through the first round but our objective is to keep writing history and the match against Japan is the most important thing," he said.
"We are capable of playing a great match. Japan is a quick team, we have to think about every detail against them."
