[3] High school baseball enjoys a particularly strong public profile and fan base, much like college football and college basketball in the United States; the Japanese High School Baseball Championship ("Summer Kōshien"), which takes place each August, is nationally televised and includes regional champions from each of Japan's 47 prefectures.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), the atmosphere of Japanese baseball games is less relaxed than in the United States, with fans regularly singing and dancing to team songs.

[4] In addition, as American writer Robert Whiting wrote in his 1977 book The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, "the Japanese view of life, stressing group identity, cooperation, hard work, respect for age, seniority and 'face' has permeated almost every aspect of the sport.

[6][7] Baseball was first introduced into Japan in 1859 after the opening of the treaty ports,[8] having been played alongside cricket by American and British expatriates in the foreign settlements until the 20th century.

[9] It was introduced as a school sport in 1872 by American Horace Wilson,[10] an English professor at the Kaisei Academy in Tokyo.

The contemporary Japanese language press lauded the team as national heroes and news of this match greatly contributed to the popularity of baseball as a school sport.

[13] Tsuneo Matsudaira in his "Sports and Physical Training in Modern Japan" address to the Japan Society of the UK in London in 1907 related that after the victory, "the game spread, like a fire in a dry field, in summer, all over the country, and some months afterwards, even in children in primary schools in the country far away from Tōkyō were to be seen playing with bats and balls".

[14] Professional baseball in Japan started in the 1920s, but it was not until the Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club (大日本東京野球クラブ, Dai-nippon Tōkyō Yakyū Kurabu), a team of all-stars established in 1934 by media mogul Matsutarō Shōriki, that the modern professional game found continued success—especially after Shōriki's club matched up against an American All-Star team that included Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Charlie Gehringer.

While prior Japanese all-star contingents had disbanded, Shōriki went pro with this group, playing in an independent league.

Five Nippon league teams have fields whose small dimensions would violate the American Official Baseball Rules.

On 18 September 2004, professional baseball players went on a two-day strike, the first strike in the history of the league, to protest the proposed merger between the Orix BlueWave and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the failure of the owners to agree to create a new team to fill the void resulting from the merger.

The strike was settled on 23 September 2004, when the owners agreed to grant a new franchise in the Pacific League and to continue the two-league, 12-team system.

The tournaments have become a national tradition, and large numbers of students and parents travel from hometowns to cheer for their local team.