Cuttlefish
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Joined: 1/24/2007
From: Oregon, USA
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The following is from Jim Allen's Japanese Baseball Page. Allen is a journalist who used to write a Bill James-style statistical abstract for Japanese baseball. The only addition that I have to make to the article below is that the first organized teams were associated with railroads because the game was introduced to Japan by men who had gone to America to study the railroad system there.
Brief History of Japanese Baseball
Japanese Baseball has existed in Japan since 1873. It first appeared amid the social, cultural and technological spasms Japan endured on the heels of the Meiji restoration. The game began as a club sport; Japan's first team was the Shinbashi Athletic Club Athletics (composed mostly of people associated with Japan's first railroad which ran from Shinbashi, in Tokyo, to the recently established treaty port of Yokohama). For a relatively good treatment of Japan's early baseball history see Robert Whiting's "You've Gotta Have Wa," (Chapter 2).
The sport became popular with schoolboys and eventually won recognition from the government. Amateur baseball was the only game in Japan until the Shibaura Club was organized in the early 1920s. The Shibaura Club was founded in Shibaura, Tokyo and eventually ended up playing in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture under the sponsorship of the Hankyu railroad. Eventually the club foundered in Takarazuka as well.
In 1934, the Yomiuri Shimbun organized another professional team, Dai Nippon. After a 1935 North American tour, Dai Nippon was renamed the Giants. Soon, other teams were formed. In 1936, Japan took the big step. In April, Japan's first professional "season" began at Koshien Kyujo near Osaka. Six teams, not including the Giants, took part in three Spring tournaments played in Koshien, Narumi Kyujo (in Nagoya) and Takarazuka near Osaka. The Tigers won the spring league with five wins and four losses.
This was not to be an anomaly. From 1936 to 1939, the Tigers were the best team in Japanese pro baseball. It was not until 1939 that their chief rivals, the Giants, began to dominate. In 1939, the schedule was changed from a split season (spring and fall) to a single 96 game season. The next season (1940), the schedule was expanded to 104 games. In 1939 and 1940, the Japanese league consisted of nine teams.
The league's season changed somewhat after that. Each team played at least 84 games in 1941. In 1942, the war in China spread to the rest of the Pacific. In spite of the continuing escalation of the war, the 1942 schedule went back to 104 games. In 1943, the schedule reverted to 84 games. In 1944, the schedule was drastically reduced to 35 games and only six teams. The 1945 season was never played. Within nine months of the beginning of the Allied occupation, Japan's pro leagues were back in business with eight teams playing 105 games each.
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