After the Central European Rally, Elfyn Evans held a 13-point advantage. Off the back of victory in Japan, Ogier has drawn the gap down to just three points.
“This is the perfect result for us and I’m very happy to win this rally in Japan at home for Toyota,” said Ogier, who won by just 11.6 seconds.
“It’s been an intense weekend, especially this last day with very challenging conditions.
“A big congratulations to the team for giving us a great car again to fight like this.
“Today we started a completely different rally with a completely different setup and it worked straight away.
“Elfyn was pushing me the whole weekend, and great wins only happen when you have great opponents.”
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Kalle Rovanpera came to Japan level on points with Ogier, but a disastrous rally has him at long odds heading to Saudi Arabia with a 24-point deficit to Evans and a maximum 35 points on offer in the season finale.
“It’s been a tricky weekend overall for us and today conditions got really difficult with a lot of rain and standing water,” said Rovanpera, who finished sixth.
“We tried what we could to get some extra points from Sunday, but it’s not been the weekend or the result that we wanted to have.
“We’ve just been a bit too inconsistent this year, but we still have the chance to go for it one more time on the final round and we will try to make that a good one and see what happens.”
Toyota occupied all three spots on the podium at its home rally, with Finland’s Sami Pajari scoring his first WRC podium of the year – 2m16s off the lead.
Fourth went to Estonia’s Ott Tanak, who wound up 3m18s off the rally leader, while Ford driver Gregoire Munster was fifth.
The rally was punctuated by attrition. Rovanpera crashed his Yaris on SS3, damaging the left rear suspension when he slid into an Armco barrier.
On the same stage, Ford’s Josh McErlean crashed his Fiesta on SS3 and tore the left rear wheel off. He suffered a DNF.
Home favourite Takamoto Katsuta made a mistake on SS11, sliding into an Armco barrier before ploughing through a plastic wall that broke his power steering.
Adrien Fourmaux crashed his Hyundai on SS15 from third. He understeered off the road and swiped a tree, which tore the passenger door off.
A windscreen wiper failure for Thierry Neuville added to Hyundai’s horror show, failing to start on Sunday.
The FIA World Rally Championship concludes on November 26-29 with the inaugural Rally Saudi Arabia.
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