Nihon Yakyū Kyōkai
If the expansion of baseball to Continental Europe and Venezuela, neither one of which had seen a professional baseball team in the 19th-century, signalled the beginning of baseball’s global era, the fact that Japan was an enthusiastic participant in the new generation of “baseball countries” was the first sign of its international dominance.
Ironically, at first, the entry of the great power of the East—having just secured that status by thoroughly destroying the Imperial Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima and forcing Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to negotiate a peace very slightly less humiliating to the Russians—was a victory for the Anglophones, at least as they saw it. American baseball, at least under the full control of the United States, was waning in popularity and importance as it became associated with the Puerto Ricans and Cubans who had fought off the Caribbean Invasion; players like Christy Mathewson and Kip Selbach, whose careers had foundered on age, injury, or contractual disputes, decamped by the dozens to Japan, where they were promised wages most other leagues would never sanction.
From its very first year of operation, NYK baseball was fast-paced, high-scoring, and exciting. Freed from the expectations of their usual hometown crowds and caught up in the newness of the venture, players in Japan focused on the fun of the game that the older leagues had forgotten. Fans responded, developing unique rituals and mascots that would later, once NYK was part of the wider baseball structure of the Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña, spread back to the older, more established leagues.
To this day, even when it mostly serves as a developmental league for the LNP, the baseball played in Japan is a unique species: just as professional and capable, but with a personality no other country could possibly imitate.
北部 連盟 / Hokubu Renmei / Northern Federation
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Throughout most of the Home Islands, various lineages of Genji fireflies announce the arrival of early summer with their gentle luminescence.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Literally called “sea cats” because of their distinctive cry, black-tailed gulls are among the most famous and represented Japanese birds.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
No one considers normal-sized squid particularly fearsome, but Hakodate’s relationship with the mollusc—which extends to dance—required honoring.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Minamoto no Yoritomo, Japan’s first proper shōgun, made the capital of his new government, controlled and managed by the samurai caste, at Kamakura.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
There are three species known as “Japanese irises,” but the rabbit-ear laevigata has been cultivated throughout Japan for going on a full millennium.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Though the swan is the official bird of Niigata, the city is too young and scrappy to identify with such a beautiful bird—outside of its football stadium.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Many cities in Japan distinguish themselves in traditional crafts, and then there’s Sabae, where 90 to 96 percent of domestic eyeglass frames are produced.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- NBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
One wonders what is stranger: that Takasaki chose one of Japan’s most famous flowers as their distinction, or that it was still available to be chosen.
南部連盟 / Nanbu Renmei / Southern Federation
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Apparently, the site where Fukuyama Castle was located happened to be nicknamed “Bat Mountain,” but the city took the connection very seriously.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Before the Tokugawa shogunate became dominant, Iga’s local self-defense leagues, made up of peasant warriors, became notorious for their spying skills.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Few citizens of Kagoshima, in 1909 or later, would have chosen a better namesake than Tōgō Heihachirō, naval hero of the Russo-Japanese War.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Ehime Prefecture chose as its animal symbol the Japanese river otter, whose populations were still quite large when the NYK began its operations.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Perhaps it is understandable that Nagasaki does not wish to be linked with the Mandarin duck, but they are the city’s athletic representatives.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Whether samurai swords or modern chef’s knives, Seki’s chief craft for the last several centuries has been precision bladesmithing.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Division titles: None.
- SBF pennants: None.
- Japan Series titles: None.
Ponds all around the city of Yamatokoriyama are used to breed and “farm” goldfish, which has given the city an irresistible aesthetic motif.