Founded by Hall of Fame pitcher Masaichi Kaneda in 1978, the Meikyukai honors players born after 1926 (the beginning of the Shōwa period).

Players are automatically inducted if they reach a career total of 2,000 hits or 200 wins in the Japanese professional leagues.

Since 2019, players who did not reach any of the above three figures, but who were deemed to have equivalent career achievements, could be inducted upon committee nomination and a vote of 75% or more current members.

In addition to Kaneda, the founding members of the club were Kazuhisa Inao, Masaaki Koyama, Keishi Suzuki, Tetsuya Yoneda, Shinichi Etoh, Sadaharu Oh, Morimichi Takagi, Masahiro Doi, Shigeo Nagashima, Katsuya Nomura, Isao Harimoto, Yoshinori Hirose, Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Takao Kajimoto, Mutsuo Minagawa and Minoru Murayama.

[3] Though other records such as home runs, stolen bases, and strikeouts are not officially included in the qualifications, they are taken into consideration if a player is few short of required hit/win/save(s).

As committee considered 200 wins are too difficult to be achieved for modern era pitchers, and players having notable combined pitching(batting) records should get qualified as well.

Hiromitsu Ochiai reached 2,000 hits in 1995, but declined membership because Kaneda and other members had repeatedly criticized him during his career.