FOUR Japanese basketball players have been sent home from the Asian Games in disgrace for allegedly paying prostitutes for sex, the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) said yesterday.

The players were spotted in a notorious red light district of Jakarta in their national jerseys last week, JOC officials told a press conference, saying the quartet had been ordered to leave immediately.

News that Yuya Nagayoshi, Takuya Hashimoto, Takuma Sato, Keita Imamura had been booted will come as a major embarrassment for Japan, which was forced to send a swimmer home from the last Asian Games in 2014 for stealing a journalist’s camera.

“I just feel a sense of shame,” Japan’s chef de mission Yasuhiro Yamashita told reporters.

The basketball players had dinner after leaving the Games village and are believed to have been solicited by touts on the street to go to a hotel with women, Yamashita added.

“I would like to humbly apologize to the Japanese public, the JOC and everyone who supports basketball for this deplorable incident,” Japan basketball chief Yuko Mitsuya said in a statement.

(SD-Agencies)