Are there foreign players on Japans professional baseball and soccer teams?
Around 700 non-Japanese have played for Japanese teams since the start of professional baseball here in 1936. Before World War II, most of them were Japanese Americans. Now the biggest non-Japanese contingent by far consists of Americans, but there are also players from the Dominican Republic, Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea. A good number of American players have returned to the U.S. Major Leagues after playing in Japan. Alfonso Soriano, who is now playing for the Chicago Cubs, once played in Japan for the Hiroshima Carp. Until a couple of years ago, there was a rule that each team in Japan could have no more than three players from outside Japan. But that rule was eliminated in 1996. However, teams can have no more than four foreign players in the starting lineup. In soccer, there are also many foreign players on Japanese teams. Professional soccer is fairly new in Japan: The J. League was established in 1993. Some of the non-Japanese who played in Japan
