Ask a Japanese person which baseball team they support and the conversation almost always starts with the Giants. Love them or root against them, the Yomiuri Giants are the sun around which Japanese baseball orbits.
The club
Founded in 1934, the Giants (Kyojin) are NPB's oldest and most decorated club, with a record 22 Japan Series titles — including a run of nine straight championships from 1965 to 1973. They play at Tokyo Dome in Bunkyo, Tokyo, one of the few NPB stadiums without a corporate naming-rights name, which fans treat as a point of pride.
What it means to be a Giant
Giants games are a national media event: the club is owned by the Yomiuri newspaper group, and its stars are household names whether they hit or miss. That spotlight is a burden — Giants players carry the heaviest expectations in the sport, and slumps become front-page news.
In Japan, you don't just watch the Giants. You argue about them.
The rivalry that defines the league
Nothing in NPB compares to Giants vs. Tigers. The two clubs have met in the Japan Series and in countless pennant races, and their annual opening matchups draw huge audiences. If the Tigers are the people's club, the Giants are the establishment — and the tension between the two is the sport's greatest storyline.
How to watch
Home games at Tokyo Dome are easy to reach by train, and tickets are among the easier seats to find on the secondary market. From abroad, Giants games feature prominently in NPB's official streaming coverage — see our watch guide for legal options.
2026: a rare second place
The Giants finished second (76–64–3), 2.5 games behind Hanshin — the first time in the two-league era that the Tigers finished a season above the Giants. Hanshin had beaten Yomiuri to the pennant in 1962, 1964, 1985, 2003, 2005, 2023 and 2025, and in every one of those years the Giants had finished third or worse. The prize for finishing this close: a Climax Series First Stage at Tokyo Dome starting October 10 against DeNA, with a ticket to Koshien on the line. For a club that treats anything less than a Japan Series appearance as failure, October is now the only season that matters.