What has been Japan's most disappointing World Cup campaign?

Most fans of Samurai Blue would probably claim as 1998, 2006, or 2014 World Cups as the most disappointing world cup campaigns for them since they were eliminated in the group stage in those editions.

However, from talking to many fans, a lot of them say that in 1998 most were just happy to have the country to be part of the tournament since expectations were pretty low and that it was their debut appearance at the FIFA World Cup despite losing all of their games. This puts 2006 or 2014 as Japan's worst appearance. Both tournaments were rather big disappointments for the nation due to high expectations set from their respective previous editions, 2002 and 2010 WC.

If I had to choose, I would say it be 2014. As someone who was following international football intensely during the 2014 World Cup qualifying era, I remembered a lot of the hype that the media, pundits, and fans were putting on that Japanese team. With players like Honda, Kagawa, and Nagatomo who were playing for top European teams like Manchester and Milan, and with the team playing strong dynamic attacking football, and winning the 2011 AFC cup and 2013 East Asian cup, it would make sense that some place that team as quality or even "dark-horse." Of course, in the tournament they were placed in a pretty even group with every team having a good chance to make it to the next round, but they lost their first game to the Ivory Coast after leading for a while, tied to a 10-man Greek team, and got pummeled in the end by Colombia despite having more shots on goal than them. As for myself, although I did see that team having quality, I thought a lot of people were way over there heads thinking Japan was going to maybe win that World Cup, let alone make a deep run, since I saw the cracks within the team after their performance at the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and a few matches (qualifying and friendlies) during the qualification cycle.

As for 2006, I was not following international football at the time, but after reviewing highlights of that World Cup cycle, expectations were pretty high since Japan had won the 2004 AFC cup, had great players such as Nakata and Nakamura, and were playing fluid football under head coach Zico. But like in the 2014 cycle, Japan would first underperform in the 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup and then crash out in the group stages in the 2006 WC. However, Japan's group in 2006 was considered harder since they had defending champions Brazil who were tipped to win the whole thing and a Croatia squad that talented, organized, and considered dark-horses going into the tournament; Australia was the only one that seemed very beatable.

In both of these tournaments, expectations were high but in the end it ended in a very disappointing fashion. But I would pick 2014 over 2006 as the bigger disappointment of the two due to the high quality of players and better results during the cycle. What do you fans of the Samurai Blue also think, which tournament was considered the bigger disappointment and why? Let's also see how well they do in this current World Cup, so far so good, but can they move past the Round of 16 and make history by reaching the Quarterfinals?