Western League (Japanese baseball) Western League (Japanese baseball) The is one of the two minor leagues ("ni-gun") of Japanese professional baseball. The league is owned and managed by the Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Teams in the Western League generally play an 80-game schedule every year. The league was created in 1952 as the Kansai Farm League, and was initially completely separate from the workings of the Nippon Professional Baseball. It featured the minor league teams of the six professional teams that had their homefields in the western region of Japan, as well one independent team not affiliated with an NPB franchise.
Kanso Yoshida Kanso Yoshida Kanso Yoshida (18951973, known to his friends as Paddy Murphy) was a Japanese-born British seaman. He was related to Japanese Emperor Hirohito by marriage. He was a resident of England for most of his life, specifically in Liverpool from 1938. Yoshida was born in Japan, a second cousin of Princess Chichibu (who had herself been born in England) who in turn became a sister-in-law of Hirohito. He came to England in 1912, but why he left Japan is unknown. He was a ship's fireman and donkeyman by trade, and began calling himself Paddy Murphy when he realized that