Japanese Baseball

Baseball was first introduced to Japan in 1872 and is currently among the country's most popular participatory and spectator sports. The first professional competitions emerged in the 1920s. The current league, Nippon Professional Baseball, consists of two leagues of 6 teams each. High school baseball enjoys a particularly strong public profile; the Japanese High School Baseball Championship (Summer Kōshien) each August is nationally televised and includes regional champions from all of Japan's 47 prefectures.

Baseball is commonly called 野球 (やきゅう; yakyū) in Japanese, combining the characters for field and ball. According to Japan's National Tourism Organization, "Baseball is so popular in Japan that many fans are surprised to hear that Americans also consider it their ‘national sport.’"

Baseball was first introduced to Japan as a school sport in 1872 by American Horace Wilson, an English professor at the Kaisei Academy in Tokyo. The first organized adult baseball team, called the Shimbashi Athletic Club, was established in 1878.

At a match played in Yokohama in 1896, a team from Tokyo's Ichikō high school convincingly defeated a team of resident foreigners from the Yokohama 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.

Professional baseball in Japan first 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 mogul Matsutarō Shōriki, that the modern professional game found continued success — especially after Shōriki's club matched up against an American All-Star team that included Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Charlie Gehringer. While prior Japanese all-star contingents had disbanded, Shōriki went pro with this group, playing in an independent league.

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