Japanese Baseball Cards from the Occupation
Japanese Baseball Card Resources Buy Japanese Cards at RobsJapaneseCards.com     RobsJapaneseCards Ebay Store     Prestige Collectibles       Other Resources     2008-09 Japanese Baseball Card Checklist & Price Guide 7th Edition by Gary Engel     Sayonara Home Run by John Gall & Gary Engel The only book of vintage Japanese cards in English     Japanese Baseball Cards An English Guide To Baseball Cards From Japan Japanese Baseball Card Blog Contact Rob asianbaseball@mindspring.com 212-828-6678   Banzai Babe Ruth is the story of the doomed attempt to reconcile the United States and Japan though the tour of Major League all stars in 1934 and the efforts of fanatical ultranationalists to drive the nations apart.  The story contains international diplomacy, espionage, attempted murder and, of course, baseball.   Pre-order Now   BUY NOW.... Amazon Barnes & Noble U.Nebraska Press		General Douglas MacArthur and the Occupying Forces purposely used baseball to help reconcile the United States and Japan after World War II.  Only two months after the end of hostilities, they sponsored a series of professional all star games, and they helped reestablish the professional, university and high school leagues in 1946.  In 1949, Lefty O’Doul brought his San Francisco Seals to Japan for a series of goodwill games.  This tour started a traditional of a MLB team coming to Japan nearly every other year. The Japanese professional league continued under a one league format until 1950 when they added seven teams and expanded to two leagues- the Central and Pacific with the winners meeting in the Japan Series.  The Allied occupation of Japan officially ended on April 28 1952. Despite Japan’s economic turmoil, the occupation period became the heyday of the vintage Japanese baseball card.  The period contains the greatest variety of cards as well as some of the most attractive cards produced on either side of the Pacific.  Menko and bromides still dominated the card industry but candy and game issues also became widespread.  Menko sets tended to contain fewer than ten cards but hundreds of different sets have been identified.  Bromides set were often larger, containing dozens of cards, but once again samples from over a hundred sets have been found.  The manufacturers of most of these sets are unknown and it is possible that many were produced by small printing shops and just released regionally.      a dagashiya   Cards were often sold at small candy shops, known as dagashiya.  Some came in paper wrappers but most were probably sold in sheets that children cut into individual cards with scissors.   Round menko are often found in stacks tied with string, suggesting that they were either sold this way or delivered to the store in stacks and ten sold by the card.  Game cards usually came as boxed sets that included the rules and playing field but sometimes came in uncut sheets inserted into magazines.  A popular Japanese card game known as kuruta involves matching a card with a letter from the hiragana alphabet and a written clue to a pitcher card.  Kuruta sets usually came in boxes and were traditionally given and played at New Year.  Since they were made to be gifts, karuta cards are often made on higher quality cardboard than menko or bromides and are among the most attractive cards.   Round Menko Kaoru Betto 1949 Flame Menko Fumio Fujimura 1948 JRM19 Kazuto Yamamoto ca.1946 menko Shigeo Chiba 1949 JRM 4 Hiroshi Oshita 1946 menko Bozo Wakabayashi 1949 Starburst Menko Hiroshi Nakahara 1949 Fan Menko Tetsuharu Kawakami 1948 JRM1   Rectangular Menko Tadayoshi Kajioka ca. 1948 menko Ted Williams ca. 1949-50 Kaoru Betto 1949 JCM 4 Joe DiMaggio ca. 1949-50 Kaoru Betto ca. 1950 menko Takeshi Doigaki 1948 JCM 2 Shigeru Chiba 1950 JCM 21 Victor Starffin 1950 Kagome   Diecut Menko Tadayoshi Kajioka 1948 JDM14 Yuko Minamimura 1950 Kagome Tetsuharu Kawakami 1947 JDM1 Victor Starffin 1948 Kagome Jiro Noguchi 1949 diecut mask Hiroshi Oshita 1949 Airplane Noboru Aota 1948 Flower Edge Kaoru Betto 1948-9 kite   Bromides Wally Yonamine 1951 JBR1 Juzo Sanada ca. 1948 1940s Sepia Bromide Bromide taba late 1940s Victor Starffin ca. 1950-1 Shigeru Chiba ca. 1953 Bobby Schantz ca. 1951 Wally Yonamine 1952 Yamakatsu bookmark bromide John Brittian 1952 Yamakatsu Joe DiMaggio ca. 1951 Yoshiyuki Iwamoto 1950-51   Game Cards Tadayoshi Kajioka 1948/9 Yakyu Shonen Haruyasu Nakajima 1948 Alps Shonen Bozo Wakabayashi 1949 Maru H Yakyu Timu Awase Victor Starffin 1950/1 Yakyu Shonen Kazuto Yamamoto 1949 Yakyu Timu Awase 1949 Yakyu Timu Awase Box 1949 JK2 karuta boxed set Noboru Aota 1948 Dreaming of Baseball Karuta       Pre -War Occupation 1953-64       1965-72 1973-1990 1991-present