The year 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of baseball in Japan, and the Baseball Federation of Japan (BFJ), Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame have joined forces to celebrate.
As the year end approaches, the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will host three events to commemorate the anniversary and reflect on the future of baseball.
A veteran of the US civil war, in 1872, Horace Wilson was serving as a professor of English at Kaisei Gakko, the forerunner of Tokyo Imperial University. He decided that his students needed more physical exercise and introduced them to baseball. Wilson returned to the United States in 1877, but 1872 marked when Japan got in touch with baseball.
On Sunday, 11 December, historian Hiroyuki Yamamuro will talk about baseball during the challenging times of World War II while Samurai Japan manager Hideki Kuriyama will speak about next year's World Baseball Classic.
On Wednesday, 21 December, Hall of Famer Kimiyasu Kudo will speak about the future of youth baseball. Hiroko Yamada, the president of the WBSC Women's Baseball Commission, will talk about the future of women's baseball.
The final event will be a round table scheduled for Thursday, 22 December.
