Overview
Japan's top league — twelve clubs in two leagues, a 143-game season, and the Japan Series.
Nippon Professional Baseball is the highest level of baseball in Japan and, by most measures, the strongest league outside North America. Twelve clubs are split between the Central League and the Pacific League, the latter using the designated hitter since 1975.
Clubs play 143 games from late March to October. Three teams from each league enter the Climax Series playoff, and the league champions meet in the best-of-seven Japan Series. Clubs are named for their corporate owners rather than their cities, a convention dating to the league's founding.
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
Professional baseball began in Japan in 1936, and the two-league structure was adopted in 1950. The game had arrived in the 1870s with American teachers and became the dominant school sport well before the professional era; the national high school tournament at Koshien remains one of the country's largest sporting events.
The posting system, formalised in 1998, governs the transfer of players to Major League Baseball and has sent Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Yu Darvish, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto across the Pacific. Japan has won three of the five World Baseball Classics.
NPB baseball is distinguished by a smaller strike zone, an emphasis on contact and situational hitting, and tie games — matches are drawn after twelve innings rather than continuing indefinitely.
Governance
NPB is governed by a commissioner and the twelve club owners. Its relationship with MLB is set out in a bilateral agreement covering the posting system and player movement.