The eagerly-awaited showpiece, which is being jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, gets underway on Thursday, with Japan playing their first group game against Zambia next Saturday before then facing Costa Rica and Spain.
The versatile midfielder will be one of the key figures in Futoshi Ikeda’s squad armed as she is with a wealth of experience.
And looking ahead to the tournament, Hasegawa believes her first season at City, where she hugely impressed, has served as the ideal springboard with which to go into the World Cup.
However, given the quality of the rest of the sides, she also acknowledged the scale of the task if the Nadeshiko are to follow suit from their previous World Cup triumph back in 2011.
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“I really enjoyed playing as number six in this team, I think it has really broadened my playing range,” said Hasegawa who made the move to City from West Ham last September.
“I really want to give back to the national team, and this season has led to my growth.
“I hope I can show that at the World Cup.
“With the increase in the number of teams, I think there will be a lot of difficult games at the World Cup.
“Like playing against Spain and then there’s England too.
“And I’m really looking forward to playing against various top countries, I’m really looking forward to seeing how well I can do.”
Hasegawa will go into the tournament as one of Japan’s most experienced players.
Have represented her country at all age levels, she won her first senior cap back in 2017 and has gone on to win more than 60 caps to date.
She was also part of the Japan squad that competed in the 2019 World Cup, going out at the last 16 stage to the Netherlands.
Reflecting back on that tournament she believes her subsequent experiences playing first in Italy with AC Milan, and more latterly England with West Ham and now City, means she will go into the 2023 showpiece a more experienced and developed player.
“For the first World Cup, I was a little bit injured, so it was hard for me to play the way I wanted to play,” Hasegawa reflected.
“Also, I was only playing in Japan at that time, and now I have played in Italy and England.
“I have experience of playing in two different countries. I want to make sure that I can bring these experiences to the next World Cup.
“I really felt the difference from the rest of the world. By playing against some of the world’s top players
“It developed my desire to play in England. I think it really helped me to improve as an individual footballer.”
