| Baseball in Japan (野球) | |
|---|---|
 Tokyo Dome during the2014 MLB Japan All-Star Series | |
| Country | Japan |
| Governing body | BFJ |
| National team | Japan |
| First played | 1872 |
| National competitions | |
| Club competitions | |
| International competitions | |
Baseball was introduced toJapan in 1872 and is Japan's most popular participatory and spectator sport.[1][2] 7 million Japanese people play baseball, which is approximately 5% of the total population.[3]
The first professional competitions emerged in the 1920s. The highest level of baseball in Japan isNippon Professional Baseball (NPB), which consists of two leagues, theCentral League and thePacific League, with six teams in each league.[4] High school baseball enjoys a particularly strong public profile and fan base, much likecollege football andcollege basketball in the United States; theJapanese High School Baseball Championship ("SummerKōshien"), which takes place each August, is nationally televised and includes regional champions from each of Japan's47 prefectures.
InJapanese, baseball is commonly calledyakyū (野球), combining thecharacters forfield andball. According to theJapan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), the atmosphere of Japanese baseball games is less relaxed than in the United States, with fans regularly singing and dancing to team songs.[5] In his 1977 bookThe Chrysanthemum and the Bat, American writerRobert Whiting wrote, "The Japanese view of life, stressing group identity, cooperation, hard work, respect for age, seniority and 'face' has permeated almost every aspect of the sport. Americans who come to play in Japan quickly realize that Baseball Samurai Style is different."[6]
In Japan,Nippon Professional Baseball players such asShohei Ohtani,Ichiro Suzuki,Hideki Matsui,Shigeo Nagashima andSadaharu Oh are regarded as national stars, and their exceptional performances have boosted baseball's popularity in Japan. All of them received or were approached for thePeople's Honour Award (国民栄誉賞,Kokumin Eiyoshō) for their achievements and popularity.[7][8]
Baseball was first introduced into Japan in 1859 after the opening of thetreaty ports,[9] having been played alongsidecricket by American and British expatriates in the foreign settlements until the 20th century.[10] It was introduced as a school sport in 1872 by AmericanHorace Wilson,[11] an English professor at the Kaisei Academy inTokyo. The first organized adult baseball team, called the Shimbashi Athletic Club, was established in 1878.[12]
The Japanese government appointed Americanoyatoi in order to start a state-inspired modernization process. This involved the education ministry, which made baseball accessible to children by integrating the sport into the physical education curriculum. Japanese students, who returned from studying in the United States captivated by the sport, took government positions. Clubs and private teams such as the Shinbashi Athletic Club, along with high school and college teams, commenced the baseball infrastructure.[13]
At a match played inYokohama in 1896, a team from Tokyo's Ichikō high school convincingly defeated a team of resident foreigners from theYokohama Country & Athletic Club. The contemporary Japanese language press lauded the team as national heroes and news of this match greatly contributed to the popularity of baseball as a school sport.[14]Tsuneo Matsudaira in his "Sports and Physical Training in Modern Japan" address tothe Japan Society of the UK inLondon in 1907 related that after the victory, "the game spread, like a fire in a dry field, in summer, all over the country, and some months afterwards, even in children in primary schools in the country far away fromTōkyō were to be seen playing with bats and balls".[15]
Professional baseball in Japan started in the 1920s, but it was not until the Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club (大日本東京野球クラブ,Dai-nippon Tōkyō Yakyū Kurabu), a team of all-stars established in 1934 by media mogulMatsutarō Shōriki, that the modern professional game found continued success—especially after Shōriki's club matched up against an American All-Star team that includedBabe Ruth,Jimmie Foxx,Lou Gehrig, andCharlie Gehringer. While prior Japanese all-star contingents had disbanded, Shōriki went pro with this group, playing in an independent league.
Thefirst Japanese professional league was formed in 1936, and by 1950 had grown big enough to divide into two leagues, theCentral League and thePacific League, together known asNippon Professional Baseball (NPB). It is calledPuro Yakyū (プロ野球), meaningprofessional baseball. The pro baseball season is eight months long, with games beginning in April. Teams play 144 games (as compared to the 162 games of the American major league teams), followed by a playoff system, culminating in a championship held in October, known as theJapan Series.[16]
Corporations with interests outside baseball own most of the teams. Historically, teams have been identified with their owners, not where the team is based. However, in recent years, many owners have chosen to include a place name in the names of their teams; the majority of the 12 NPB teams are currently named with both corporate and geographical place names.
Much likeMinor League Baseball in the United States, Japan has a farm system through two minor leagues, each affiliated with Nippon Professional Baseball. TheEastern League consists of seven teams and is owned by the Central League. TheWestern League consists of five teams and is owned by the Pacific League. Both minor leagues play 80-game seasons.[17]
The rules are essentially those ofMajor League Baseball (MLB), but technical elements are slightly different: The Nippon league uses a smaller baseball, strike zone, and playing field. Five Nippon league teams have fields whose small dimensions would violate the AmericanOfficial Baseball Rules.[18]
Also unlike MLB, game length is limited and tie games are allowed. In the regular season, the limit is twelve innings, while in the playoffs, there is a fifteen-inning limit (games in Major League Baseball, by comparison, continue until there is a winner). Due topower limits imposed because of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the 2011 NPB regular season further limited game length by adding a restriction that no inning could begin more than three hours and thirty minutes after the first pitch.
NPB teams have active rosters of 28 players, as opposed to 26 in MLB (27 on days of doubleheaders). However, the game roster has a 25-player limit. Before each game, NPB teams must designate three players from the active roster who will not appear in that contest.[19] A team cannot have more than four foreign players on a 25-man game roster, although there is no limit on the number of foreign players that it may sign. If there are four, they cannot all be pitchers nor all be position players.[20] This limits the cost and competition for expensive players of other nationalities and is similar to rules in many European sports leagues' roster limits on non-European players.
In each of the two Nippon Professional Baseball leagues, teams with the best winning percentage go on to a stepladder-format playoff (3 vs. 2, winner vs. 1). Occasionally, a team with more total wins has been seeded below a team that had more ties and fewer losses and, therefore, had a better winning percentage. The winners of each league compete in the Japan Series.
On 18 September 2004, professional baseball players went on a two-day strike, the firststrike in the history of the league, to protest the proposed merger between theOrix BlueWave and theOsaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the failure of the owners to agree to create a new team to fill the void resulting from the merger. The strike was settled on 23 September 2004, when the owners agreed to grant a new franchise in the Pacific League and to continue the two-league, 12-team system. The new team, theTohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, began play in the2005 season.
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In Japan,high school baseball (高校野球,kōkō yakyū) generally refers to the two annual baseball tournaments played by high schools nationwide culminating in a final showdown atHanshin Kōshien Stadium inNishinomiya. They are organized by theJapan High School Baseball Federation in association withMainichi Shimbun for theNational High School Baseball Invitational Tournament in the spring (also known as "Spring Kōshien") andAsahi Shimbun for theNational High School Baseball Championship in the summer (also known as "Summer Kōshien").
These nationwide tournaments enjoy widespread popularity, arguably equal to or greater than professional baseball. Qualifying tournaments are often televised locally and each game of the final stage at Kōshien is televised nationally onNHK. The tournaments have become a national tradition, and large numbers of students and parents travel from hometowns to cheer for their local team. The popularity of these tournaments has been compared to the popularity ofMarch Madness in the United States.[21]
In Japan, non-professional baseball is known asShakai-Jin Yakyū (社会人野球,Shakaijinyagu; english: Baseball of Society Members).
Amateur baseball leagues exist all over Japan, with many teams sponsored by (or being part of) companies. Because of that, it is usually referred to in English asIndustrial Baseball. Non-professional baseball baseball is governed by theJapan Amateur Baseball Association (JABA). Players on these teams usually are employed by their sponsoring companies and receive salaries as company employees, not as baseball players. However, in recent years, JABA has allowed corporate-related teams to have an X number of players that can be hired and paid full-time to just play baseball, thus making it more semi-professional than amateur.[22][23]
The best teams in these circuits are determined via tournaments and leagues that lead qualification for three tournaments: theIntercity baseball tournament, the Amateur club national championship and theIndustrial League national tournament. Corporate teams are allowed to play only the Intercity and the Industrial National Tournaments.[24]
The level of play in Japanese industrial baseball is very competitive; Industrial League players are oftendrafted to NPB, are selected to represent Japan in international tournaments when NPB players are not available to play,[24] and Major League Baseball players such asHideo Nomo (Shin-Nitetsu Sakai),[25]Junichi Tazawa (Nippon Oil)[26] andKosuke Fukudome (Nihon Seimei),[27] had started their professional careers playing industrial baseball.
Japan has won theWorld Baseball Classic three times since the tournament was created. In the2006 World Baseball Classic, they defeatedCuba in the finals[28] and in the2009 World Baseball Classic, Japan defeated itsarch-rival ofSouth Korea in 10 innings to defend their title.[29]In the2023 World Baseball Classic, they reclaimed their title by defeating the United States 3–2 in the Championship game. The national team is consistentlyranked one of the best in the world by theWorld Baseball Softball Confederation.
In the 2025 league season, 12 Japanese baseball clubs recorded an average home league attendance of at least 20,000:
| # | Club | Average |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hanshin Tigers | 41,722 |
| 2 | Yomiuri Giants | 39,761 |
| 3 | Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks | 38,281 |
| 4 | Chunichi Dragons | 35,012 |
| 5 | Yokohama DeNA BayStars | 33,245 |
| 6 | Hokkaido Nippon‑Ham Fighters | 31,442 |
| 7 | ORIX Buffaloes | 28,571 |
| 8 | Hiroshima Toyo Carp | 28,356 |
| 9 | Tokyo Yakult Swallows | 27,944 |
| 10 | Chiba Lotte Marines | 26,018 |
| 11 | Saitama Seibu Lions | 24,395 |
| 12 | Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles | 23,713 |
Source:[30]
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Baseball around the world | ||
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