The origins of Japanese baseball may be traced back to the 1860s

The birth of Japanese baseball may have been rewritten once again. It has long been accepted that baseball was introduced in 1872 by American professor Horace Wilson when he was taught to students at Kaisei Academy in Arakawa, Tokyo. Last year, Japanese professional baseball historian Nobuysui Ito discovered new evidence that sailors from the USS Colorado may have played a baseball game against locals in Osaka in January 1871.

Recently, Rob Fitts, an expert on the history of Japanese baseball, revealed an earlier documentary clue. He was instructed in the late Australian scholar Harold Brown. In his 1976 essay "A Glimpse of the Past: Baseball Introduced to Japan," Harold S. Williams found a key account: "On August 4, 1869, about a year and a half after the opening of the Port of Kobe, the Hyogo Shimbun reported that ...... One night last week, we witnessed seven or eight people playing cricket and many more playing baseball. "

That means the first record of baseball in Japan dates back to July 1869 — seven years before the National League was founded. The Fitz team checked the original 1869 Hyogo Shimbun and confirmed that the northeast corner of the Kobe Concession was used as a baseball and cricket training ground. The location of the area was also marked on the 1870 map of the Shenju enclave, which is consistent with the record.

Although the exact date of the game and the identity of the participants are no longer known, this discovery advances the history of baseball in Japan. The "Wilson Introduction" (1872) and the "Colorado Incident" (1871) were both later than the Kobe record. "This account has completely rewritten our understanding of the spread of baseball in East Asia," Fitz said. "