not release the name of the athletes involved.

Mr Sonoda had received an official warning, Kyodo news agency reported, as had other coaching staff.

"Until now I have been doing things the way I saw fit, but I will mend the things that need fixing," the agency quoted him as saying.

Japan's Sports Minister Hakubun Shimomura said if true, the allegations were "deplorable".

The use of physical punishment in the Japanese sporting arena is not new - in 2007 the head of a sumo stable was fired by the sport's national body over the treatment of a 17-year-old wrestler who died after being beaten during practise.

But the issue has been in the spotlight since the suicide in December of a high school student after beatings from his basketball coach.service, two were converged, and one was federated (separate organizations within an information services division of professional services).

Two organizations had deconverged their library and IT services and combined the library with other cognate services to form an academic services directorate and a student services directorate respectively. Two other institutions had formed newly converged services in the last five years, in both cases bringing the library and IT together, into an information directorate in one case, and academic services in the other (which also included student services and quality enhancement). However, the key finding here is that most members of the group now have separate library organizations, which includes four high-profile services that have deconverged their merged or converged service organization within the last three years (King’s College London,