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There is no bigger sport in Japan than baseball and this is shown by the over 22 million fans the NPB garnered in 2024.

However nothing in Japan comes close to when Japan is represented by its national team. In the 2023 World baseball classic team Japan faced off against team USA in the final, a game that had a staggering 62 million viewers from Japan representing over 40% of all households country wide.

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While baseball is the most influential sport in Japan, their most influential player today is Shohei Ohtani. Shohei currently plays on the Los Angels Dodgers but before moving to the MLB he was regarded as the best Japanese high school player in history, breaking Japan's high school pitch speed record at the time throwing 99mph (160km/h). Shohei would then be drafted to the Hokkaido Nippon-ham Fighters where he would famously hit a baseball out of the Tokyo Dome

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A video on Shohei Ohtani's Baseball journey 

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A video on Shohei Ohtani's Baseball journey 

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Baseball was introduced to Japan in 1872 by an American professor named Horace Wilson who initially introduced the sport to his class he taught at Kaisei Gakkō now known as The University of Tokyo. As the sport began to grow schools in Japan began to form teams of their own creating the start of competition surrounding baseball in Japan.

Later in the year 1936 Japan's first professional baseball league called the Japan Baseball League or JBL (later reformed into the current day NPB) would be established starting the beginning of the countries largest professional sports league and sparking a cultural phenomenon that can be felt throughout Japan and the baseball world today.

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The Koshien championship also known as the summer Koshien is not only the biggest high school sporting event in Japan but in the entire world. The Tournament sees over 4000 high schools throughout Japan fighting for a lucrative spot in the Koshien Championship held at Koshien stadium each year. Being able to play in this tournament is considered a great honor and has seen some of Japan's greatest players play in it such as Ichiro Suzuki, Shohei Ohtani, Yu Darvish and Sadaharu Oh

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After world war 2 Japan was forced to go through a reinvention that was helped and support by American influence. With these changes Japanese schools adopted Western team sports, “characterized by formal organization, rigorous training, strict rules, and the presence of officials at all matches,” (Roden). This helped increase popularity of team sports in Japan and most benefited Baseball. After world war 2 Japan's previously established JBL was able to start back up before being reorganized in 1949 into the NPB which we see today which helped spark even more popularity among the Japanese people helping make it Japan biggest professional sports league.

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Baseball, America’s pastime, and its popularity is still largely confined to the Americas. So how come it is the most popular sport in Japan?

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Sadaharu Oh known as the Homerun King or Sanshin Oh is one of Japan's most influential baseball players in history. In his 22 season career he amassed 868 homeruns the most in history while playing for Japan's most famous team the Yomiuri Giants.

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Japan's baseball culture is like no other and could only be compared to football culture in Europe its so surreal. It is extremely common for fanbases of teams to cheer throughout the entire game while staying engaged the entire time regardless of how the team is performing. Pre game presentations are also a special as many teams go all out on the entertainment value for the fans viewership.

Above is a link to a video that goes extremely in depth on how baseball culture in Japan came to be.

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-https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=oh----000sad

-https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g02195/

-https://www.mlb.com/news/featured/japan-baseball-history

-https://japanball.com/npb-stadiums/tigers-hanshin-koshien-stadium/

-https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sadaharu-Oh

-https://greatbigstory.com/baseball-in-japan/