The was a professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

league in Japan which operated from 1936 to 1949, before reorganizing in 1950 as

Nippon Professional Baseball is a professional baseball league and the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning simply ''Professional Baseball''; outside of Japan, NPB is often referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league ...

. The league's dominant team was Tokyo Kyojin (renamed the

Yomiuri Giants The are a Japanese professional baseball team competing in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams based in Tokyo, the other being the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They h ...

in 1947), which won nine league championships, including six in a row from 1938 to 1943, when many of Japan's best players were serving in the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

.Reaves, Joseph A. (2002). ''Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia''. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 70–71. . Standout players from the Japanese Baseball League era included Haruyasu Nakajima, Tetsuharu Kawakami, and Kazuto Tsuruoka; pitchers Hideo Fujimoto, Eiji Sawamura, Victor Starffin, and Tadashi Wakabayashi; and two-way players Fumio Fujimura, Shosei Go, Masaru Kageura, and Jiro Noguchi.

League structure

Unlike American pro teams, Japanese Baseball League teams were usually named after their corporate owners/sponsors rather than the cities or regions in which they played. This was because Japanese franchising does not have strong territorial requirements as in the Major Leagues; as a result, the JBL teams clustered in metropolitan areas in Japan's center (Tokyo,

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the list of cities in Japan, fourth-most populous city in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020, and the principal city of the Chūkyō metropolitan area, which is the List of ...

) and south (

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

). As a result, teams were notorious for how often they changed their names, often because of changes in ownership/sponsorship (and also because of nationalistic regulations imposed during wartime, such as the outlawing of English team names). (The

, the

Chunichi Dragons The are a professional baseball team based in Nagoya, the chief city in the Chūbu region of Japan. The team plays in the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball. They have won the Central League pennant nine times (most recently in 2011 ...

, and the Hanshin Tigers are the only surviving major clubs that have always been based in their respective cities. Additionally, the current

Orix Buffaloes The are a Nippon Professional Baseball team formed as a result of the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment by the merger of the Orix BlueWave of Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes of Osaka, Osaka Prefecture ...

are a merger of two clubs which never left their hometowns.) Most Japanese Baseball League teams did not have an "official" home stadium; instead, teams played at any stadium in the area in which they were based. All league championships went to whoever had the best record at the end of the season, without a postseason series being played.

History

The league was established on February 5, 1936, as the Japan Occupational Baseball League, with an initial complement of seven teams. Three of the teams were based in Tokyo, two in

, and two in

. Due to a lack of position players, a number of players in the league both pitched and batted. At first (until after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

), the JBL was a " dead ball" league, due to Japan conserving rubber (including inside baseballs) for its war efforts; instead it used Balatá inside the balls. Initially, the league played split seasons, doing so from 1936 to 1938. In the debut 1936 season, it split into spring, summer, and fall seasons, only keeping track of the standings in the fall season. The league played spring and fall seasons in 1937 (approximartely a 100-game schedule in total) and 1938 (total 75-game schedule), adding one new team each year. The league was renamed the Japanese Baseball League in 1939, playing a 96-game schedule. Before the 1940 season, one of the founding teams, Nagoya Kinko (originally the Nagoya Golden Dolphins), merged with the Tokyo Senators. The 1940 season featured a 104-game schedule. In October 1940 (responding to rising hostility toward the West due to World War II), the league outlawed the use of English in Japanese baseball. In response, the Korakuen Eagles became "Kurowashi", the Osaka Tigers became "Hanshin", the Tokyo Senators became "Tsubasa", and (eventually)

Lion The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'', native to Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body (biology), body; a short, rounded head; round ears; and a dark, hairy tuft at the ...

became "Asahi". In 1941, the JBL appointed its first president, Jiro Morioka (formerly VP of Dai Tokyo). Morioka negotiated with the

Japanese Imperial Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

to keep professional baseball going through the early years of the Second World War. The league played a 90-game schedule in 1941, a 104-game schedule in 1942, and an 84-game schedule in 1943. Two Tokyo-based teams dissolved before the 1944 season: the Yamato Baseball Club (originally the Korakuen Eagles) and the

Nishitetsu Baseball Club The Nishitetsu Baseball Club was a team in the Japanese Baseball League (JBL). Founded in 1936 as the Tokyo Senators, the team went through a number of name changes and mergers before being dissolved after the 1943 season. The team's undisputed ...

(originally the Tokyo Senators). Due to the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theatre, was the Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II fought between the Empire of Japan and the Allies of World War II, Allies in East Asia, East and Southeast As ...

, the 1944 season was truncated to about 35 games, and the 1945 season was skipped entirely. Many players enlisted in the

, with 72 of them losing their lives in the war. Whiting, Robert. ''You Gotta Have Wa'' (Vintage Departures, 1989), p. 46. The league restarted on November 6, 1945, and a full season of 105 games was played the next year, with two new teams (both based in Tokyo) joining the league. One of the new teams, Gold Star, was owned by textile manufacturer Komajiro Tamura, who also owned

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

(formerly Asahi). A rival four-team league, known as the , played a 30-game summer season in 1947. Unable to compete against the more established JBL, however, the Kokumin League disbanded a few games into the 1947 fall season. The Japanese Baseball League played a 119-game schedule in 1947. That year, baseball personality Sōtaro Suzuki proposed that JBL teams should have pet names like the Yomiuri Giants', whose pet name was "Kyojin", and names such as the Osaka Tigers' alias "Mouko" (''fierce tiger''), the revived Tokyo Senators' "Seito" (''bluestockings'') and the

's "Taihei" (''tranquility'') began to be used by the press. However, some teams rejected the use of these pet names, so they were never fully adopted. The 1948 season had a 140-game schedule, and the 1949 season had a 134-game schedule. After the 1949 season, the league reorganized into today's

(NPB). The four earliest-established clubs formerly in the Japanese Baseball League were placed in NPB's

Central League The or , also known as the for sponsorship reasons, is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League i ...

, while the four later surviving franchises went to the

Pacific League The , or , or the , due to sponsorship reasons, is one of the two professional baseball leagues constituting Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship competes against the winner in the Central League for the a ...

Foreign players

Victor Starffin, an ethnic Russian pitcher, was a dominant player of the era and the first professional pitcher in Japan to win 300 games. Shosei Go, nicknamed "The Human Locomotive", was a speedy player from

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

who played in the league for the Kyojin and the Tigers. He won the 1943 JBL Most Valuable Player award as a member of the champion Kyojin. Hiroshi Oshita was another Taiwanese player who starred in the JBL. From 1946 to 1949 he played for the Tokyo Senators/ Tokyu Flyers. (After reorganization, Oshita stayed with the Flyers until 1951, and then moved to the

Nishitetsu Lions The are a professional baseball team in Japan's Pacific League based north of Tokyo in Tokorozawa, Saitama, Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture. Before 1979, they were based in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, in Kyushu. The team is owned by a subsidiar ...

, finishing his Japanese professional career with a .303 lifetime batting average, 201 home runs, and 861 RBI.) Harris McGalliard (Japan's "Bucky Harris"), Herbert "Buster" North, and James E. Bonner ("Jimmy Bonna") became the first

Americans Americans are the Citizenship of the United States, citizens and United States nationality law, nationals of the United States, United States of America.; ; Law of the United States, U.S. federal law does not equate nationality with Race (hu ...

to play in Japan's professional baseball league in 1936. (Bonner was

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

, thus beating

Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first Black American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the Baseball color line, ...

to professional baseball 11 years before Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers.)Thomas, Dexter
"Japan's First Black Baseball Player: Eleven years before Jackie Robinson, Tokyo signed a black ace pitcher,"
''Medium'' "Culture Club" (Oct. 7, 2014). They were joined by the Japanese-American players Kiyomi "Slim" Hirakawa, Fumito "Jimmy" Horio, Kazuyoshi "George" Matsuura, Yoshio "Sam" Takahashi, and Tadashi "Bozo" Wakabayashi.

Teams

MVPs

* 1937 (spring): Eiji Sawamura, Tokyo Kyojin, P * 1937 (fall): Harris McGalliard, Korakuen Eagles, C * 1938 (spring): Hisanori Karita, Tokyo Senators, 2B * 1938 (fall): Haruyasu Nakajima, Tokyo Kyojin, OF * 1939: Victor Starffin, Tokyo Kyojin, P * 1940: Victor Starffin, Tokyo Kyojin, P * 1941: Tetsuharu Kawakami, Tokyo Kyojin, 1B * 1942: Shigeru Mizuhara, Tokyo Kyojin, 2B * 1943: Shosei Go, Tokyo Kyojin, OF * 1944: Tadashi Wakabayashi, Hanshin, P * 1945: ''No league play because of World War II'' * 1946: Kazuto Tsuruoka, Kinki Great Ring, 3B * 1947: Tadashi Wakabayashi, Osaka Tigers, P * 1948: Kazuto Tsuruoka, Nankai, 3B * 1949: Fumio Fujimura, Osaka Tigers, 3B

Season-by-season standings

Season champion in bold.

Notes

References

External links

Japanese Baseball Data Archive at ''The Baseball Guru''

List of players at Japanese Baseball

"Japanese Baseball League (Spring) (Foreign) Encyclopedia and History," (1936–1938)
at Baseball-Reference.com
"Japanese Baseball League (Fall) (Foreign) Encyclopedia and History," (1936–1938
at Baseball-Reference.com
"Japanese Baseball League (Foreign) Encyclopedia and History," (1939–1949
at Baseball-Reference.com {{Sports leagues in Japan Defunct baseball leagues in Japan Sports leagues established in 1936 Sports leagues disestablished in 1949 1936 establishments in Japan 1936 disestablishments in Japan