Identifying Japanese Bromides (Starffin, Kawakami et al)

[rman444]

Frank - nothing to add other than congratulations on such a great album. This thread with research is outstanding!

[Frankish]

Originally Posted by rman444

Frank - nothing to add other than congratulations on such a great album. This thread with research is outstanding!

Thanks. Exploring this album has been one of the most enjoyable projects I've undertaken in decades of collecting.

Okay, so through the first 11 pages, I'm down to 7 cards I just can't get a handle on. While I am getting decent with the player names of the era, identifying cards solely from the picture is still a bit outside my comfort zone....

[Jeff Alcorn]

Hi Frank,

Here are a few more notes for you: Pacific became the Robins not the Flyers. The Flyers former name was the Senators.

The pitcher in that group is Hirotaro Mori of the Hankyu Braves.

You are correct that the Robins P is Seitaro Watanabe on a 1948 card. There was no Watanabe on the Robins in 1947.

The bottom left P next to Shigeaki Kuroo should not be Fujiwara. The only Fujiwara in Japanese BB in 1947 or 1948 was Dragons C Tetsunosuke Fujiwara.

For the unknown players, I think the sliding player is HOF Makoto Kozuru of the Dragons. He was the only #32 in BB in 1947. He switched to #24 in 1948 when he went to the Flyers.

The Flyers player is HOF Hisanori Karita. The tape is covering the kanji for manager, and at the end of the line is second baseman. Karita was the Flyers Player-Manager in '47 & '48.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

[Jeff Alcorn]

At least one more Frank-

The Robins player with his hands on his knees is Shigeyoshi Morishita I believe. I have a nice batting shot of him in a reference book and the face looks the same. I am not sure on these 2, but I think that the Stars RH could be Michio Shigematsu and the LH could be Tsuneo Mitomi. I have a couple of different shots that bear a resemblance for both, but I can't be absolutely sure on either one.

Jeff

[Frankish]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you so much. You are very generous with your time.

And of course you are right...silly mistake on my part with Robins and Flyers. Sometimes as I'm writing from my notes I manage to confuse myself hopelessly.

Originally Posted by Jeff Alcorn

The bottom left P next to Shigeaki Kuroo should not be Fujiwara. The only Fujiwara in Japanese BB in 1947 or 1948 was Dragons C Tetsunosuke Fujiwara.

That is very interesting. So would it make sense that the bottom left picture (page 11) is then Tetsunosuke Fujiwara? It is a little hard to read but along the top margin of the card is printed:

中部 藤原

Thanks again!

[doug.goodman]

What a great great thread this is. Thank you all.

[Frankish]

Well, my research break was shorter than planned thanks to Jeff's generous help. The knowledge lurking on this board never fails to impress me....

Page 12 of the album begins with some familiar faces from Page 11. In the upper left is Giichiro Shiraki along with (and this may be wrong as I am having a tough time reading it) Maeda, although embarrassingly I can’t find them on the same roster so am not sure of the year. Probably a dumb oversight on my part. [Thanks to Jeff, I now know this is again Hisanori Karita] To the right of that bromide are two cards of Shigeaki Kuroo on the Flyers.

The second row begins on the left with a player that reads (to me) as Minagawa, but I am not sure who that is. Any ideas? [Sadayuki Minagawa, shortstop 1948] To the upper center is a miniature card with no text (and as a result I have no idea!) and to the far upper right another card of Maeda? [Actually it is Hisanori Karita] Again, I find it hard to read. In the middle row below that are cards of Oshita and what I take to be Eikichi Nagamochi, a player I don’t come across often.

The bottom two cards are also Hiroshi Oshita, one of my favorite players. But I will have more on that for the next page in the album.

The bromides appear to be 1947 or 1948 issues (based on uniforms and the like), which is consistent with this album generally which I am guessing was put together by the original owner in late 1948 or 1949.

[Frankish]

Hiroshi Oshita is my favorite ballplayer from the early postwar period in Japan. He debuted on the Senators. And if the fact that one of the eight teams making up the 1946 Japanese Baseball League was named the Senators doesn’t speak volumes about the odd relationship between Japan and the US during the early postwar/occupation period, I don’t know what does. Anyway, in his rookie season he hit .281 and set a home run record (20). In 1949 he would go on to bat .305 with 38 home runs and a .626 slugging percentage.

He was hugely popular and famously used a blue-painted bat (the other great hitter of that period, Tetsuhara Kawakami, played with a red bat). He had a lifetime batting average of .303 and hit 201 home runs. His career statistics might have been even more impressive if he hadn’t missed a prime stretch of playing years as an officer in the war.

This thirteenth page of the album is made up of nine Oshita cards. Five of the bromides picture him in his dark 1946 Senators uniform and are clearly what I would deem rookie cards from 1947 bromide sets (although "rookie" cards in Japanese sets can be tricky to define). The other four cards picture him the Tokyu Flyers uniform, presumably from the 1947 season. There are two very distinctive cards on this page. The center card may be from the pretty rare 1947 Marutsu Small Photo Set (JBR 152), while the card in upper left of the page bears a great deal of similarity but is as far as I can tell yet uncatalogued.

Ironically (or sadly or coincidentally…I don’t know), this all time Flyer great was actually training as a kamikaze pilot when the war ended.

I've attached some closeups of cards that I don't see very often and strike me as attractive....