Editing Sports in Japan (section)

===Baseball===
{{Main|Baseball in Japan}}
[[File:Japan Baseball.jpg|thumb|200px|right|The [[Japan national baseball team]] huddles around their manager after losing to [[Cuba national baseball team|Cuba]] in the [[2006 Intercontinental Cup (baseball)|2006 Intercontinental Cup]].]]

[[Baseball]] is historically the most popular team sport in Japan. It was introduced to Japan in 1872 by [[Horace Wilson (professor)|Horace Wilson]], who taught at the Kaisei School in [[Tokyo]]. The first baseball team was called the Shimbashi Athletic Club and was established in 1878. Baseball has been a popular sport ever since. It is called {{Nihongo|2=野球|3=yakyū}} in Japanese, combining the characters for "field" and "ball".

Hiroshi Hiraoka, who was in the [[United States]] studying engineering, introduced the game to his co-workers at Japan's national railways in 1878. He and his co-workers created the first baseball team, the Shimbashi Athletic Club, and dominated other teams which popped up in Japan. However, it was not until 1896 that a team from Ichikō, the elite [[University of Tokyo]] preparatory school, defeated a team from the [[Yokohama Country & Athletic Club]] 29 to 4 that the sport took a dominant hold in Japanese popular culture.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Reiss|first1=Steven|title=Sport in Industrial America, 1850-1920|date=2013|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|location=Oxford|isbn=978-1-118-53771-8|page=Chapter 6}}</ref> The match was the first recorded international baseball game in [[Asia]]. After that victory, several other universities in Japan adopted the sport, and it quickly spread throughout Japan. Since then, teams from Japan have traveled to learn from their American counterparts. [[Waseda University]] was one of the first teams to cross the ocean to improve their skills. In 1905, the team traveled to the United States, where it played college teams from around the country. Other universities in Japan made similar trips, and U.S. teams traveled to Japan to play.

From 1913 to 1922, American [[Major League Baseball|MLB]] stars visited Japan and played against university teams. They also held clinics on technique. [[Herb Hunter (baseball)|Herb Hunter]], a retired major league player, made eight trips to Japan, from 1922 to 1932 to organize games and coaching clinics.

Baseball is also played in Japan's junior and senior high schools. Each year in March and August, two tournaments are held at Koshien Stadium for senior high school teams that win a prefecture tournament.  References to [[High school baseball in Japan|high school baseball]] ({{Nihongo|2=高校野球|3=kōkō yakyū}}) generally refer to the two annual baseball tournaments, played by high schools nationwide culminating at a final showdown at Hanshin Kōshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Japan. They are organized by the Japan High School Baseball Federation in association with Mainichi Shimbun for the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament in the spring (also known as "Spring Kōshien"), and Asahi Shimbun for the National High School Baseball Championship in the summer (also known as "Summer Kōshien").  These nationwide tournaments enjoy widespread popularity, arguably equal to or greater than professional baseball. Qualifying tournaments are often televised locally and each game of the final stage at Kōshien is televised nationally on NHK. The tournaments have become a national tradition, and large numbers of frenzied students and parents travel from hometowns to cheer for their local team. It is a common sight to see players walking off the field in tears after being eliminated from the tournament by a loss.