180829-0026-KS - YC&AC Baseball Team

A baseball team at the Yokohama Cricket & Athletic Club (YC&AC), ca. 1910.

Established in 1868 as the Yokohama Cricket Club (YCC), YC&AC is Japan’s oldest sports and social club. By the 1880s sufficient numbers of Americans had joined the club for baseball to supplant cricket in terms of popularity. On May 29, 1896 a historic match was held between players of the club and a team from Tokyo Ichiko high school, an elite University of Tokyo preparatory school.

It was the first formal international baseball match played in Japan. Tokyo Ichiko team’s victory made them national heroes and greatly contributed to the popularity of baseball as a school sport in Japan. The victory was also highly symbolic in that Japan was still catching up with the West, yet managed to beat America at their own game.