The Shochiku Robins () were a

Japanese baseball Baseball was introduced to Japan in 1859 and is Japan's most popular participatory and spectator sport. The first professional competitions emerged in the 1920s. The highest level of baseball in Japan is Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), whic ...

team that played in

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 ...

(NPB). The franchise originated in 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 ...

(NPB's predecessor) and existed from 1936–1953, when it merged with the Taiyo Whales. Originally based in Tokyo, the club moved to

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 ...

in 1941.

Franchise history

Japanese Baseball League

Dai Tokyo

The club was founded as Dai Tokyo before the 1936

season, with ownership by the Tokyo daily newspaper '' Kokumin Shimbun''. The team made history that year by signing an

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. ...

player, Jimmy Bonner, 11 years before

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, ...

broke the

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 ...

color barrier.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). The worst team in the league its first year, the club improved in spring 1937.

Lion

On August 31, midway through the 1937 fall season, the team changed its name to the Lion Baseball Club when it was acquired by Komajiro Tamura, with sponsorship by Lion Toothpaste. Late in the 1940 season, the Japan Baseball League outlawed English nicknames (due to rising tensions with the West). Owner Tamura refused to change the team's name, insisting that "Lion" is Japanese (In actuality, he wanted to honor the team's sponsorship contract with the Lion Corporation.) The team completed the season as Lion, finishing in last place, 50 games behind Tokyo Kyojin.

Asahi

In 1941 the team moved from Tokyo to

and acquiring new sponsorship from ''

Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...

''; from 1941 to 1944 it was called the Asahi Baseball Club. In 1943 the team had its first winning season, finishing at 41-36-7.

Pacific

After the resumption of the Japanese Baseball League in 1946 (after World War II), the team changed its name to Pacific Baseball Club (popularly known as ''Taihei'' — "peace"). Meanwhile, team owner Komajiro Tamura started another franchise that season, Gold Star, which signed many of Asahi's former players, as well as Asahi's former manager Michinori Tubouchi. To fill out its roster, Pacific signed long-time Tokyo Kyojin/

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 ...

pitcher Victor Starffin, as well as some other famous players. These signings led to a serious conflict, and Pacific was forced to forfeit four games that season. One homegrown player who rose to prominence was pitcher and part-time infielder Juzo Sanada (later known as Shigeo Sanada), who eventually became a four-time 20-game-winner and a member of the

Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame The , commonly known outside of Japan as the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, is a hall of fame and museum in Tokyo dedicated to professional baseball, with a prominent focus on professional baseball in Japan. The Hall is intended to honor and co ...

Taiyo Robins

English nicknames returned to Japanese baseball after the 1946 season, and the team changed its name to the Taiyo Robins. Still owned by Komajiro Tamura, "Taiyo" came from Tamura's fabric store Taiyo Rayon, and "Robins" from Tamura's personal nickname, "Koma" ("robins" in Japanese). The ''

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

'' for "Taiyo" (太陽) has connotations of the sun, and for a brief confusing period the team featured the words "Suns" on its road uniforms and "Robins" on its home uniforms. Starffin left after the 1947 season, and none of the name variations helped improve the team's play. The JBL reorganized after the 1949 season; the franchise ended its Japanese Baseball League run with a losing season every single year except 1943.

Nippon Professional Baseball

Shochiku Robins

In 1950, when the JBL reorganized to become

, the Robins joined 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 ...

. A share of the team was sold to the Shochiku Corporation and it became the Shochiku Robins. Amazingly, that year the team won 46 more games than the year before, totaling 98 wins and coming in first in their division. Led by league MVP Makoto Kozuru and his 51 home runs and still-league record 163 RBI, as well as Sanada's 39 victories, the Robins played in the inaugural

Japan Series The Japan Series ( , officially the Japan Championship Series, ), also the Nippon Series, is the annual championship series in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top baseball league in Japan. It is a best-of-seven series between the winning cl ...

, ultimately falling to the Mainichi Orions, 4 games to 2.

Merger with the Taiyo Whales

After a mediocre year in 1951, they lost 84 games in 1952. It was decided that any Central League teams ending the season with a winning percentage below .300 would be disbanded or merged with other teams. The Robins fell into this category, and were merged with the Taiyo Whales to become the Taiyo Shochiku Robins in January 1953. The resulting franchise is now known as the

Yokohama DeNA BayStars The are a professional baseball team in the Japanese Central League. Their home field is Yokohama Stadium, located in central Yokohama. The team has been known by several names since becoming a professional team in 1950. It adopted its current n ...

Managers

* 1936 (spring): Katsuzo Ito * 1936 (fall)–1937: Tokuro Konishi * 1938: Tokuro Konishi/ Katsuo Takada * 1939–1940: Katsuo Takada * 1941–1943: Aiichi Takeuchi * 1944: Michinori Tubouchi * 1946: Sadayoshi Fujimoto * 1947: Michinori Tubouchi/ Sadayoshi Fujimoto * 1948: Nobuyoshi Hasegawa * 1949: Shuichi Ishimoto * 1950: Tokuro Konishi * 1951: Kyouichi Nitta * 1952: Kyouichi Nitta/ Tokuro Konishi

Japanese Baseball League season-by-season records

Nippon Professional Baseball season-by-season records

References

{{reflist Defunct Nippon Professional Baseball teams Baseball teams established in 1936 Sports clubs and teams in Kyoto Prefecture