Nippon Professional Baseball merged with the Orix BlueWave and were replaced by the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. Until 1993, baseball was the only team sport played professionally in Japan. In that year, the J.League professional soccer league was founded. The new soccer league placed teams in prefectural capitals around the country—rather than clustering them in and around Tokyo—and the teams were named after their locations rather than after corporate sponsors. The wave of players moving to Major League Baseball, which began with Hideo Nomo "retiring" from the Kintetsu Buffaloes, then signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, has also added to the financial problems.
Hideo Ohba aikido, his 6th dan in judo was awarded in 1950. During the 60's Hideo Ohba lead the effort for the creation of many of the koryu (old school) no kata forms from dai-ichi (first) to dai-roku (sixth) in order to work on techniques for demonstrations and other purposes (i.e. preservation, self-defense) other than randori. After his initial organization he presented his work to Kenji Tomiki who gave advice and corrections which was added to the kata. In 1978 he was awarded 9th dan by the Japan Aikido Association. He was also considered adept at kendo, naginata and iai. In February