Yakyuu - Baseball in Japan

I kinda helped my friend's homework this afternoon and it's about  野球 - yakyuu (means baseball in Japanese). It was so confusing yet challenging and then I kinda curious about Japan's baseball league and here I am writing about it. Hope this helps.

Origin of Yakyuu

Well first, yakyuu is one of the most popular sport in Japan beside soccer. Many of Japanese kids want to be a pro baseball player when they grow up. It was introduced in 1872 by American, Horace Wilson, who was an English language professor at the Kaisei School in Tokyo. The first baseball team was called the Shimbashi Athletic Club and was established in 1878. Baseball has been aky popular sport ever since. The kanji of yakyuu itself means field (no - 野) and ball (tama - 球).
We can conclude that yakyuu means playing ball in a field, just like how the baseball is.

Types of Baseball Leagues

Pro Yakyuu - Professional Baseball

The first Japanese professional league was formed in 1936, and by 1950 had grown big enough to divide into two leagues, known as Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). (It is called Puro Yakyū (プロ野球 or Professional Baseball in english).

Those two leagues are Central League and Pacific League.

• Central League (セントラル・リーグ Sentoraru Rīgu) : Also called Se League (セリーグ Se Rīgu). The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League in the annual Japan Series. It currently consists of six teams from around the country. The current teams in Central League are Chunichi Dragons, Hanshin Tigers, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Yokohama DeNA BayStars, and Yomiuri Giants

• Pacific League (パシフィック・リーグ Pashifikku Rīgu) : Also called Pa League (パリーグ Pa Rīgu). The winner of the league championship competes against the winner in the Central League for the annual Japan Series. It currently consists of six teams from around Japan. The current teams are Chiba Lotte Marines, Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, Orix Buffaloes, Saitama Seibu Lions, and Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

Koukou Yakyuu - High School Baseball League

Koshien (甲子園) generally refers to the two annual baseball tournaments played by high schools nationwide culminating at a final showdown at Hanshin Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Japan. Koshien also called "The Holy Ground" by high school baseball player because every team really dream to be in that stadium someday.

There are two leagues every year, Spring Koshien and Summer Koshien.

• Spring Koshien (春の甲子園 haru no koshien): National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament or shortly called Spring Koshien are organized by the Japan High School Baseball Federation in association with Mainichi Shimbun. Takes place in March at Koshien Stadium, It also called "Senbatsu" (センバツ).

• Summer Koshien (夏の甲子園 natsu no koshien): National High School Baseball Championship or Summer Koshien, is an annual nationwide high school baseball tournament. It is the largest scale amateur sport event in Japan. Organized by the Japan High School Baseball Federation and Asahi Shimbun, takes place during the summer school vacation period, culminating in a two-week final tournament stage with 49 teams in August.

Playing at Koshien is the door to playing at the professional level. Due to the recruiting practices of Japanese high schools, top prospects often play on strong teams that are able to reach the final tournament at Kōshien. Several professional baseball players first made their mark at Koshien, including Eiji Bando, Sadaharu Oh, Koji Ota, Suguru Egawa, Masumi Kuwata, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Hideki Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka.

Amateur Baseball

Amateur baseball leagues exist all over Japan, with many teams sponsored by companies. Amateur baseball is governed by the Japan Amateur Baseball Association (JABA).

Yakyuu, Manga and Anime

Manga and anime is one of the reason why baseball got popular among Japanese. There are more than 10 titles of manga with baseball genre and some of them are getting adaptations into anime or movie. Here are some of them:

Diamonds of Ace

Daiya no A [Daiya no Esu] or Diamonds of Ace is written and illustrated by Yuji Terajima and published by Kodansha. It has been serialized by Weekly Shounen Magazine since 2006. In 2008, Ace of Diamond received the Shogakukan Manga Awards for the shounen category. In 2010, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for best shounen manga. An anime adaptation was premiered on 6 October 2013.

The anime now have two season. The first season aired on October 6, 2013 – March 29, 2015 (75 episodes). The second season aired on April 6, 2015 – now with more than 26 episodes.

The manga is still running in Weekly Shounen Magazine, together with Fairy Tail, Baby Steps, Hajime no Ippo, and other titles.

Mr. Fullswing

Written and illustrated by Shinya Suzuki. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, and collected in 24 tankoubon.

Amakuni Saruno is a 15 year old student of Junishi High School. As a teenage boy, he desperately tries to find a girlfriend. Being fed up with seeing all the girls fall in love with high school athletes, he decides to join a sports-club himself. He starts looking around at the different sports clubs with the guidance of his friend, Kengo Sawamatsu . They go to check out the weight lifting club (of which there is only one member, a large, frighteningly buff guy), only for Saruno to see a girl that he assumes to be the manager of the club and show off for her. After sufficiently hurting himself, he helps the girl, Nagi Torii, carry some weights off somewhere, and while talking to her finds out that she is actually a manager for the baseball club, not the weight lifting club. Saruno decides to join the baseball club so he can win the heart of Torii.

Yakyuu and Video Games

Not only manga and anime, people can experience baseball on video games too! There are many video games about baseball since the 90s but most of them are about the American Baseball. Japan also made some games with Japanese baseball teams on it. And the popular character from Nintendo, Mario Bros also joined the baseball team! Curious?

Pro Yakyuu Spirits (プロ野球スピリッツ)

Pro Yakyuu Spirits is a baseball simulation game series developed and published by Konami. This game got many sequel and can be played in many platforms such as Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP, PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS.

The graphics also getting better in each sequels, and the latest one is "Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2015" for PS3 and PS Vita and released in Japan Spring 2015. This simulation game will make you feel like a pro baseball player as you manage your team to be the champion of the league.

Mario Super Sluggers

Mario Super Sluggers, known in Japan as Super Mario Stadium Family Baseball (スーパーマリオスタジアム ファミリーベースボール Suupaa Mario Sutajiamu Famiri Besuboru), is a sports video game for the Wii developed by Namco Bandai Games and NOW Production, and published by Nintendo.

It is part of the Mario sports series, and the sequel to Mario Superstar Baseball for the Nintendo GameCube. Mario Super Sluggers was released in Japan on June 19, 2008 and in North America on August 25, 2008. It was unreleased in Europe and Australia,

The player can choose a captain and which eight players to have on a team. The number of innings can be chosen, and which field position the players are on. The player can choose which one of the nine stadiums to play on, as long as it's unlocked.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_in_Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_League

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_League

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_school_baseball_in_Japan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Yaky%C5%AB_Spirits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Super_Sluggers


That's all for today's post. Hope that this post can provide you with a little bit of new information about yakyuu or baseball in Japan. I know it's not much but I tried my best to do some reading about it today. Thank you for reading and see you on the next post ^^b