How and when was Baseball introduced in Japan ?

Current research into the topic places the first game in Japan on September 30, 1871.

Professional baseball started in Japan in 1936, the year after a team of Japanese toured the U.S. Collage and high school baseball have a longer history. The current two-league system was started in 1950.

Professional baseball was played throughout the war with the exception of 1945. A pitcher by the name of Sawamura died in the Pacific during WWII and now assumes the name of the Japanese equivalent to the Cy Young Award - the Sawamura Award. (It was believed that he was the first Japanese pitcher to throw 160 kph (100 mph), although the methods for proving it are still controversial.)

From what I've read, during the occupation, McArthur (sp?) found baseball a great way to help restore Japanese morale and promoted the restart of Pro Yakyu. I think that that may be where the confusion came from.

If you're interested, the FAQ lists a number of books to start researching the history of Japanese baseball. Some are kind of dated, as even Robert Whiting points out in the above thread (updating information from his own book). But other than where newer research pushes back the first game, they are accurate historical records which I would put more faith in than most newspapers today.

Hope this helps set the record straight.

To further the point that Japan had established professional baseball before WWII, please see this thread.

Jim Albright

Thanks.

That's one of the threads I was referring to. I'm mostly curious about how could that person (the author of the article on the web site) get that information wrong about professional baseball in Japan?

Nick

PS: Maybe I should start another thread on this subject, but I've read somewhere that the rules regarding the treatment of an Umpire in Japan are different than the one present in the MLB. Is it true (and can anyone point me to a web site that lists those differences)?

I don't know about the official rules, but I'm sure if you search the term "umpires" in the forums here, you'll get examples of how the umpires are treated by the players and owners - basically with less support than in MLB.

Jim Albright

This web site [Media Net Japan - in Japanese] has some information on the history of baseball in Japan.

I don't understand Japanese (yet!).

Is there a similar site in English?

Nick

Nick:

While baseballguru.com focuses almost exclusively on Japanese professional baseball, there's a lot of stats and history (much compiled or written by yours truly) about NPB. Just look at the Japanese insider link and browse to your heart's content.

The other web site which says baseball came to Japan after WWII is badly misinformed. Why this happened, I have no idea, but I'm sure that one part of the answer is such claptrap was written without any attempt to check the facts. You'll see that we here often complain about such carelessness even in the media, because we see it so often.

Jim Albright

I just recently reserched about Hanshin Tigers, and found this...

Baseball came to Japan in the 1870s. American visiting professors taught it to their students. Baseball became very popular at the high school level, and still is. From the early 1900s there has been an annual high school tournament held near Osaka. Koshien stadium, where the Tigers play, was built to host the tournaments.

In 1936, the Japan Professional League was formed with six teams, including the Tigers. They took part in the first professional baseball "season" in Japan the following year, which consisted of three spring tournaments played at Koshien Stadium, Narumi Stadium in Nagoya, and Hiratsuka near Osaka. The Tigers won the 1936 spring league, making them Japan's first professional champions.

The team now plays in the Central League, which was formed in 1950 when Japan went to a two-league system.