Japanese Baseball Player Management Firms
The closest thing to "player management firms" within Japan are the sports goods makers who do "consulting" for the players, giving them merchandise gifts in exchange for the publicity of using their goods. I thought it was pretty good that, this year, Matsuzaka (Lions) turned down an extension on his maker consultant contract in favor of choosing what he wanted to use from a variety of makers.
Baseball player agents is a new field of business here, and the "powers that be" are trying their best to prevent it from catching on. No player agent may represent more than a single ball player in all of Japan (this excludes agents for foreign players), which makes it not that promising of a specialized field. The "powers that be" claim that by representing more than one player, an agent can have an unfair advantage over a ball club when it comes to making a deal. As though the current four management people vs. a wide eyed high school graduate at said dealings were fair.
I don't know if this answers your question. But hope this helps.
Attanacio does indeed represent both Ichiro and
Sasaki. Hideo Nomo, Hideki Irabu and, iirc, Masato Yoshii, are all represented by Dan Nomura while Tsuyoshi Shinjo is represented by a company called IMG. I have no idea who is working with Shigetoshi Hasegawa or Makoto Suzuki, though. Nomura also
fronted for Kats Maeda when he tried to get a big league roster spot. Maeda is now back in Japan. Greg "Boomer" Wells has acted as a kind of informal adviser for different Japanese players before they got real U.S. agents.
I also urge you to read the following article from Baseball America:Will Flynt's Journal:
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Hey Commish,
I was hoping you could help me out. I've been researching the names of sports/athlete management firms that are representing Japanese ball players in the U.S. but haven't had much luck. I was hoping to find contact information for both their U.S. and Japan office sites.
Thanks for your help.
Jaime
P.S. Great site!!