The is one of the two baseball halls of fame in Japan, the other being the . The Meikyukai is a limited company for public benefit. Founded by Hall of Fame pitcher Masaichi Kaneda in 1978, the Meikyukai honors players born after 1926 (the beginning of the

Shōwa period Shōwa most commonly refers to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa ** Shōwa era (昭和), the era of Hirohito from 1926 to 1989 * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufactu ...

). Players are automatically inducted if they reach a career total of 2,000 hits or 200 wins in the Japanese professional leagues. Since 2003, players recording 250 saves are also inducted, with records from

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

(MLB) also being recognized. Since 2019, players who did not reach any of the above three figures, but who were deemed to have equivalent career achievements, could be inducted upon committee nomination and a vote of 75% or more current members. Inductees are awarded a special jacket and participate in various baseball-related events during the off-season. Meikyukai members mostly make appearances in charity and volunteer events. The organization holds annual meetings and a

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

tournament, which is often broadcast on television. All of the money raised from the golf tournament is donated to the

Red Cross The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...

History

Masaichi Kaneda founded Meikyukai on July 24, 1978. In addition to Kaneda, the founding members of the club were Kazuhisa Inao, Masaaki Koyama, Keishi Suzuki, Tetsuya Yoneda, Shinichi Etoh,

Sadaharu Oh Sadaharu Oh ( Japanese: , ''Ō Sadaharu''; born May 20, 1940), also known as Wang Chen-chih (), is a Japanese-born Chinese former professional baseball player and manager who is currently the chairman of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of N ...

, Morimichi Takagi, Masahiro Doi, Shigeo Nagashima, Katsuya Nomura, Isao Harimoto, Yoshinori Hirose, Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Takao Kajimoto, Mutsuo Minagawa and Minoru Murayama. In 2008, founder Masaichi Kaneda passed on club leadership to home run champion

after running it for more than 30 years. Kaneda later quit the club when it re-formed as a limited company in 2010. As of December 2022, Atsuya Furuta is the current chairperson of the club. The most recent inductees are Koji Uehara and Kyuji Fujikawa in 2022. Despite neither of them reaching 200 wins or 250 saves in their career, Meikyukai offered them membership after deeming both players' overall career achievements as worthy of induction.

Qualifications for inclusion

The founding members of the club limited membership to players born after 1926, partly because they only wanted members that had begun their career after the two-league system of Japanese baseball was established in 1950 (when the

Japanese Baseball League The was a professional baseball league in Japan which operated from 1936 to 1949, before reorganizing in 1950 as Nippon Professional Baseball. The league's dominant team was Tokyo Kyojin (renamed the Yomiuri Giants in 1947), which won nine le ...

reorganized into

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 ...

), but mostly because Kaneda did not want to include qualified members, such as Tetsuharu Kawakami, that were older than he was. Originally, only players born in the

(1926–1988) can join, the rule was changed in 2012, allowing post-Shōwa born players to be inducted in the near future. Records in

(MLB) are also valid in counting the numbers; However, Meikyukai only takes records from the point where the player started his NPB career (i.e.: records before debut in NPB don't count). For example, Alex Ramírez's 86 hits in MLB before his NPB career were excluded and he was not inducted until he recorded his 2,000th NPB hit on April 6, 2013. Though other records such as home runs, stolen bases, and strikeouts are not officially included in the qualifications, they are taken into consideration if a player is few short of required hit/win/save(s). Yutaka Fukumoto was specially inducted when he reached 800 career stolen bases (he would later mark 2,000 career hits). Such inductions was formally codified in 2019, allowing players who are originally not eligible to be inducted. As committee considered 200 wins are too difficult to be achieved for modern era pitchers, and players having notable combined pitching(batting) records should get qualified as well. Nationality is not officially regarded as a qualification, as two of the founding members (

and Isao Harimoto) did not have a Japanese Nationality when Meikyukai was founded. However, only two non-Japanese player ( Alex Ramírez and Alfonso Soriano) so far has met the milestone since foundation, and only Ramírez was recognized as a qualified member. As stated below, the reason being that, despite Soriano reaching the 2000 hits (2,097 hits) needed, almost all of those hits were in his years in MLB, and that the 2000 hit requirement was, as stated above, had to be achieved in NPB.

Members

Current Members

Active NPB/MLB players (as of beginning of 2025 season) are indicated with an asterisk (*). * Koji Akiyama *

Shinnosuke Abe is a Japanese former professional baseball player and current manager, who spent his entire 19-year career with Nippon Professional Baseball's Yomiuri Giants, serving as the team's captain from 2007 to 2014. He has twice been named the MVP of th ...

* Norichika Aoki * Hiromasa Arai *

Takahiro Arai Takahiro Arai (Japanese: 新井貴浩, born January 30, 1977, in Naka-ku, Hiroshima) is a Japanese-Korean former professional baseball player. He is the manager of Hiroshima Toyo Carp in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball from the 2023 season. ...

* Masahiro Araki * Michiyo Arito * Hideto Asamura* * Yu Darvish* * Masahiro Doi *

Yutaka Enatsu is a former Japanese pitcher regarded as one of the best Japanese people, Japanese strikeout pitchers of all-time. In , he recorded 401 strikeouts, which is still the world record. Enatsu was a big player in the Black Mist Scandal (Japanese base ...

* Taira Fujita * Yutaka Fukumoto * Kosuke Fukudome * Kazuya Fukuura * Kyuji Fujikawa * Atsuya Furuta * Isao Harimoto * Osamu Higashio * Masaji Hiramatsu * Yoshihisa Hirano* * Yoshinori Hirose * Tadahito Iguchi *

Atsunori Inaba Atsunori Inaba (稲葉篤紀, born August 3, 1972) is a Japanese professional baseball manager, coach and former player. He was the Most Valuable Player of the 2006 Japan Series. He is currently the general manager for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham ...

* Takuro Ishii * Hitoki Iwase * Tomoaki Kanemoto * Hideji Katō * Kazuhiro Kiyohara * Hiroki Kokubo * Norihiro Komada * Kimiyasu Kudo * Takumi Kuriyama* * Hiroki Kuroda * Tomonori Maeda * Makoto Matsubara *

Hideki Matsui , nicknamed "Godzilla", is a Japanese former professional baseball outfielder and designated hitter. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Oakland Athletics, Tampa Bay Rays, and in Nipp ...

* Kazuo Matsui *

Shinya Miyamoto is a former professional baseball player from Suita, Osaka, Japan. He played shortstop. He was chosen as the captain of the Japanese olympic baseball team for the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially t ...

* Norihiro Nakamura *

Hideo Nomo is a Japanese former baseball pitcher who played in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and Major League Baseball (MLB). He achieved early success in his native country, where he played with the Kintetsu Buffaloes from to . He then exploited a ...

* Kenjiro Nomura * Yohei Oshima* * Michihiro Ogasawara *

* Alex Ramírez * Hayato Sakamoto* *

Kazuhiro Sasaki Kazuhiro Sasaki (佐々木主浩 ''Sasaki Kazuhiro'', born February 22, 1968) is a Japanese former professional baseball relief pitcher. He played his entire Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) career with the Yokohama Taiyō Whales / Yokohama ...

* Isao Shibata * Ichiro Suzuki * Keishi Suzuki * Shingo Takatsu * Yukio Tanaka * Motonobu Tanishige * Kazuyoshi Tatsunami * Takashi Toritani * Seiichi Uchikawa * Koji Uehara * Kazuhiro Wada * Tsutomu Wakamatsu * Hisashi Yamada * Koji Yamamoto * Masahiro Yamamoto * Hiroyuki Yamazaki * Tetsuya Yoneda

Honored Members

Deceased players who died during their membership are considered as "Honored Members". * Shinichi Etoh * Kazuhisa Inao * Hiromitsu Kadota * Takao Kajimoto * Sachio Kinugasa * Manabu Kitabeppu * Masaaki Koyama * Mutsuo Minagawa * Choji Murata * Minoru Murayama * Shigeo Nagashima * Katsuya Nomura * Yasunori Oshima * Katsuo Osugi * Morimichi Takagi * Kazuhiro Yamauchi

Former Members and Non-Inductees

Masaichi Kaneda, Kenichi Yazawa, Tsuneo Horiuchi were once members of Meikyukai, but later quit due to their own reasons. Hiromitsu Ochiai reached 2,000 hits in 1995, but declined membership because Kaneda and other members had repeatedly criticized him during his career. First baseman Kihachi Enomoto (with 2,314 career hits) didn't decline membership, but never participated in any of the club's meetings or events before his death in 2012, and was not recognized as a formal member nor a honored member. Left fielder and second baseman Alfonso Soriano (with 2,097 career hits) technically met the 2,000 hits requirement in 2013, but he was not recognized as a formal member. Many suggest his significantly low NPB career hit (only 2 out of 2,097) preventing him from being introduced.

References

External links

* {{in lang, ja History of baseball in Japan Baseball museums and halls of fame Awards established in 1978 1978 establishments in Japan Baseball organizations in Japan