Professional baseball in Japan the first American to play professional baseball in Japan when he joined the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Kurabu (Tokyo Giants) in December 1934, touring with them in 1935. Jimmy Bonna, Kiyomi "Slim" Hirakawa, Fumito "Jimmy" Horio, Kazuyoshi "George" Matsuura, Andrew "Bucky" Harris McGalliard (Japan's "Bucky Harris"), Herbert "Buster" North, Yoshio "Sam" Takahashi, and Tadashi "Bozo" Wakabayashi became the first Americans to play in Japan's professional baseball league in 1936. The American writer Robert Whiting wrote in his 1977 book "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat" that, While others have objected to characterizing the sport in these terms, many Japanese players and
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