28 members of the association including Ochiai, Mayumi, Tao, and Nashida gathered together

In July 1982, a concrete proposal was made to make the secretariat of the Professional Baseball Players Association in Japan a union. At the end of the same year, a symbolic incident occurred. Lotte catcher Dr. Takahashi was not satisfied with the contract terms offered to him and was on hold when the team unilaterally notified him of his dismissal. Normally, parties would negotiate until they reached an agreement, but a sudden firing would leave the player without a job.

The secretariat began supporting Takahashi’s withdrawal from his unfair dismissal in January 1983 (Takahashi was allowed to voluntarily retire after re-signing and was paid a compensation). On July 23, the players’ association held an extraordinary general meeting where the policy of forming a union was decided, and the rules were to be drawn up by the secretariat. This was a proposal from the players’ side in preparation for the implementation of the new baseball agreement.

Nakahata called on fellow players’ association members born in 1953 (28 associations), including Hiromitsu Ochiai, Akinobu Mayumi, Yasushi Tao, and Masataka Nashida, to secretly share the idea, and before long they also got involved. Nakahata says:

“Honestly, I don’t think anyone really understood what was going on, but they said, ‘Kiyoshi, if you’re going to do it, we’ll help you.’ What unified us was our sense of purpose. What were we forming a union for? That was, ‘For players to be not consumables or accessories, but to have a status as an organisation protected by law, and to have a relationship where we can speak to the organisation and teams on an equal footing.’ If this policy wavered, and we were shaken by pressure, we would be crushed in an instant.

We had to appoint someone as Secretary General, so we brought in a former Nippon Ham player named Toshitsugu Nishii. He did a great job. Then we had Akinobu Mayumi from Hanshin. Hanshin and the Giants are rival teams, but I got along really well with Mayumi, and he was really good at getting to the point.”

As soon as training camp began in February 1984, the Players’ Association Secretary-General, Mr. Nishii, visited each team’s training camp and gave a lecture to the players about the union. He conducted a questionnaire and encouraged them to join, and all of them immediately submitted their membership forms.

“We needed to get information from each team in order to apply for unionization with the Tokyo Regional Labor Relations Commission. We asked each team for their cooperation to thoroughly research how many hours the players were tied up with events and practice schedules, and when we submitted the results to our lawyers, they told us, ‘This is more restrictive than the average worker. There is a strong reason to form a union.'”

The season takes up half the year, and there are also training camps and a host of club events during the off-season, so players have surprisingly little free time.

On July 21, an extraordinary general meeting of the players’ association was held, and the rules of the secretariat were approved. Although the requirements for becoming a labor union under the Labor Union Law have not yet been met, an outsider union (non-legal union) was formed as a step to reach that point, and Nakahata became the chairman. Now that Nakahata has come out into the public eye, he continues to make a racket.

On September 30th, the day of the game against Yakult at Jingu Stadium, the team submitted a request for review of union qualifications to the local labor committee. Then, on November 5th, when the off-season began, the local labor committee finally recognized the players’ association as a labor union.

Nakahata leans forward from the sofa in his living room and reminisces about that time.

“I think we received the notification of our certification on the phone here at home. This was back when there were no cell phones. I was really happy. It felt like a reward.”

On November 19th, the Professional Baseball Players Association was registered as a legal entity. It was finally born as an official labor union.

However, the reports from that time were not all positive.