URAWA -- Kawasaki Frontale faced tough resistance from the Urawa Reds as it suffer a 2-1 loss in the first round, second leg of the Nabisco Cup on Wednesday night but held off the Division Two team 4-2 on aggregate to advance to the second round of the annual tournament.
Frontale will next play defending champion Kashiwa Reysol on July 5 and 12.
All other Division One teams (with the exception of Gamba Osaka, which played a first-leg match) advanced to the second round, including JEF United Ichihara, which downed Oita Trinita 3-1 at home after being held to a 2-2 draw in the first leg.
Gamba beat Consadole Sapporo 2-1 at home Wednesday but will visit Sapporo for the return leg May 24. Their matchup had been rescheduled because of the Mount Usu volcanic eruption.
The Reds, needing to score four goals to overcome their 3-0 first-leg defeat, launched a fierce attack from the outset of the game in front of 10,763 at Urawa's Komaba Stadium.
Kenji Oshiba put the all-Japanese Reds ahead in the 17th minute when the 21-year-old forward pounced on a failed clearance from Frontale defender Shuhei Terada, drove up the field and rounded advancing goalkeeper Takeshi Urakami outside of the box before firing the opener into an empty goal. Midfielder Yuichiro Nagai gave the homeboys a 2-0 lead by slotting a Toshiya Ishii rebound home three minutes after the break.
Urawa defender Tsutomu Nishino then brought down Frontale forward Takayuki Suzuki in the box in the 67th minute and Kawasaki's Paraguayan midfielder Alvarenga converted the spot kick to widen the visitors' aggregate lead.