Watanabe Quits?

- Can anyone confirm this rumour? I've heard this news second hand just as I've gotten home.

I seriously doubt that Watanabe would quit.

Well guess what? You heard it here first! He did quit! Taking young up and coming ball players out to dinner, giving them "gifts" and so on! Good riddance to this selfish, greedy pig of a man!

The story can be found here: [Link - Yahoo! News - English]

I saw it on the news tonight, and it looks like somebody finally didn't like the way Watanabe "paid under the table" to get all the good players. But who knows if that's really the reason why he "stepped down."

"Steps Down," hah! I like the choice of words they use. He got caught telling his agents to just dish out money, thinking money will buy everything. I just hope that he won't be running the show behind the scenes, even though he's not the "official" owner.

It appears to be so. I saw a fragment on NHK which said that Watanabe is quitting. There was something about a Meiji University student that was somehow tied into it, and he was apologizing for his role in something related.

More information tomorrow (JST) when I can take the time to digest the printed word. But it appears to be true.

Well they finally got caught. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Giants have been doing this sort of thing for decades.

But you know, apart from the obvious impact on the merger proposals, what about the taxation/accounting angle? If the Giants have been paying secret bribes, where precisely has this money been coming from? I'm sure the taxation authorities will take more than a passing interest in the matter.

This is exciting stuff.

- Well guess what? You heard it here first! He did quit!

Well, I must say that now the NPB will be better off and will start to reform with the removal of Watanabe.

As Shakespeare might put it, 'struth!

The other big story I have seen was the threat by the NPB Players' Association to go on strike unless the planned CL-PL merger is shelved. A rare show of teeth!

Big days in Japanese baseball, indeed. We all await more details.

Watanabe Tsuneo is the owner of the Yomiuri conglomerate, correct? How can he step down as an owner? If he owns the majority of the shares of a company, he owns the company. Is there some other position he has stepped down from? Takuo Takihana, the new "boss," isn't the new owner. He is the new "boss." So what position is this?

At last, someone clicks onto the salient (and thus far un-mentioned) point! Nabetsu is indeed chairman and editor-in-chief of Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, of which one entity is the Giants (incidentally, he holds many other influential positions away from baseball, too: he is a member of sumo's group that decides on the selection of yokozuna and a high-up in a media ehics group).

Takihana is the "owner" of the Giants, which is part of a corporate group headed by none other than Nabetsu.

Watanabe does not own any stock in Yomiuri, to my knowlege. He was originally appointed to the position of president of the Yomiuri Shimbun, from his previous post as head of the political department. Before then he was a star reporter for many years, one who used his elite pedigree to wield considerable influence in the Japanese political world. (His support helped Nakasone become Prime Minister.)

As de facto head of the Yomiuri media conglomerate which owns the Yomiuri Giants, one of his perks was inherit the mantle of "ohna" of the ball club, which is just another way the Japanese baseball world has of describing the man at the top of a Pro Yakyu team and has nothing to do with ownership. It's just a term Japanese baseball picked up from the Americans and misused.

Now that Watanabe has departed from the baseball team in this laughable charade, which is surely designed for other purposes (since under the table payments have been going on for years) he remains as chairman of Yomiuri holdings, which, as indicated above, "owns" the Giants and other elements of the vast Yomiuri Group. There is a private school of thought among Japanese reporters that believes Watanabe is using this latest 2 million yen "scandal" as an excuse to extricate himself from what has become an increasingly untenable and unpopular position in the fight over a one-league system, and to express his dissatisfaction with Seibu's Yoshiaki Tsutsumi who has been dragging his heels on a merger with Lotte. After all, Watanabe could just as well have let the front office execs take the heat and continued on as before.

It's not yet entirely clear what's going on here, but almost no one I know in NPB circles takes the reported story at face value. Something else is in play.

This has all the signs of a power-play in the making. Nabetsu "stepping down" is just the start of things to come. My first guess is he wants to have his hands free to push his one league agenda. Remaining at the helm of the Giants in this battle would be perceived as having too much of a conflict of interest in the eyes of the public. Now that he has stepped down he can claim to be less involved.

Questions to Bob: I am doing a study of the Japanese media landscape (media companies and their ownership structuers etc.) in relation to baseball. I have found some books, but any good suggestions would be very welcome. Preferably in English. My Japanese reading is still shaky.

Plus: Who does own the majority of Yomiuri Holding stock? I presume it is a publicly traded stock, but who holds the majority of it? Some wealthy family maybe?

On the baseball side: I talked to Nomaguchi Tadahiko two weeks ago. He is pitching for Nomura-kantoku at Sidax at the moment, but has made up his mind to sign with the Giants come November. This Meiji Daigaku pitcher story might have an impact on him because the Giants threw money his way, too. I am curious whether the Japanese press will check out his story before the draft. Not likely. Like you said this is part of something bigger. Baseball politics Japanese style. This is going to be one exciting fall.

Bouton-kun:

I'd try the website JapanMediaReview.com and read the book "Cartels of the Mind" for openers. They deal with the Japanese media in general. William Kelly of Yale University has been studying and writing about the history of Japanese media in relation to baseball, with varying degrees of success (and accuracy). He can be reached at William.Kelly at yale d0t edu.

The last time I looked into Yomiuri stock holdings, which was several years ago, the leading shareholders were the Shoriki family - descendants of Masutaro, the paper's founder.

Good luck with your research.

Bob W.

Bob, thank you very much for the information. I appreciate it. I will follow up on it and try to keep you up to date.

I am making arrangements to go to the Tokyo area next year for about a year and a half. I am not sure where you live, but if I make it, maybe we will get a chance to meet some day. That would be nice.

Thanks again and good luck with your endeavours.

I can be reached at rwhiting at gol d0t com.

I'm in Japan on and off, about 4-5 months a year in toto (or "total," as Westbay-san and most others in the English-speaking world would put it).