Lamp Sale! No Dads Allowed.

 

I picked up three cards from one of the many oddball sets from the 60s the other day - the 1960 JBR 230 set ( referred to as "Toshiba Matsuda Lamp Coupon Bromides" in Engel).

This was a set of 25 cards issued to promote the 70th anniversary of......well, that is a hard question to answer but I'll give it a go here.

There are three issues with this set.  First, what is the name of the product at the heart of the sale being advertised?  Second, what is this 70th anniversary thing commemorating?  Third, why were dads excluded from the celebration?

Lets start with the name.  The Japanese spelling of the name of the product on the card is マツダランプ. Engel uses the correct conventions to turn that into the English "Matsuda Lamp", but on looking it up online it seems this might actually be a mistake.  According to the Japanese Wikipedia entry  the product in question was, bizarrely, actually an American rather than Japanese one.  In 1909 the Shelby Electric Company in Ohio released a lightbulb it called the "Mazda Lamp", which through licensing agreements would later end up being produced in Japan by Toshiba.  So I think "Mazda Lamp" is the correct name for these.

Now, what was celebrating a 70th anniversary in 1960? If the Mazda bulb was invented in 1909 it would have been only 51 years old in 1960 when these cards came out, not 70.  

Likewise Toshiba itself wasn't turning 70, it had been created as a result of a merger of two other companies in 1939 and was thus just 21 years old.

One of its two predecessor companies (of the two which had  merged to create Toshiba) - Tokyo Denki - had been founded in 1890 however, which makes the math work and thus these cards likely mark the anniversary of Tokyo Denki's founding, rather than the invention of the Mazda Lamp or the founding of Toshiba.

That leads us to the third issue, which arises from the back of the cards.

Look at all that blank, wasted space - you'd think you were looking at the back of a 2023 Topps NPB card.

The interesting thing is that little bit of writing at the bottom.  The bottom part of the card was a cut off entry form that you could mail in to Toshiba in order to win a prize.  

It appears however that dads weren't allowed to enter this contest.  The columns are divided into two groups, one of which lists prizes for mothers (diamond ring, pearl necklace, perfume, cosmetics case, etc), and the other lists prizes for children (baseball glove, bicycle, tennis racket, etc).  It doesn't specifically say that dads aren't allowed to enter, but there are no prizes for them listed so we can infer that they were de facto excluded.  

If you are familiar with how tightly Japanese society still defines gender roles today, and then subtract 63 years of minimal progress on the gender equality front from that, the existence of this is not surprising.  Moms go shopping for Mazda Lamps, kids come with them, dad goes to work and has nothing to do with that, so why even bother including him in a contest he's never going to see?  Logical, but also kind of an odd piece of social history to see primary evidence of on a baseball card.

I should perhaps mention the players I got.  Junzo Sekine, Katsuya Nomura and Minoru Murayama. All hall of famers!  Not a bad group.  The cards themselves are kind of neat - they are about postcard sized only more elongated.  Definitely going to be a pain in the butt to figure out how to store them, but otherwise I'm happy to add them to the collection. 

Uncut Sheet of 1963 Marusho

 

This is an uncut sheet of 16 cards from the 1963 Marusho Flag Back set (JRM 13c).  The complete set is 40 cards so this sheet has almost half of them.  It looks miscut in the above image but that is just because my scanner was slightly too small and cut the top and bottom edges off.

This set is one of the few vintage menko baseball sets that is easier to find in the United States than it is in Japan.  Back in the 1960s Americans Bud Ackerman and Mel Bailey imported a lot of Japanese cards to the US and this set was among them.  You can read about it more on Dave's excellent post about the history here.  

So in the US its quite a bit easier to find than other menko sets.  In Japan in contrast its not really noticeably easier or harder to find than most other sets from the same era.

This sheet never left Japan.  The ones that were imported to the US (by Buck Ackerman with this set) had numbers stamped on the backs.  This one doesn't have any numbers stamped on it which, along with the fact that I bought it in Japan, means it wasn't among those exported:

Another point of interest about the backs of this one is that it is printed in green ink.  According to Engel this set is most commonly found with brown ink backs, while green ink backs are rarer.  I'm a bit curious if all of the exported ones were brown ink backs, while the green ink backs like this were never exported, which might explain why they are rarer.

This sheet is missing the key card from this set - Sadaharu Oh - but it has two of the other big names.  Isao Harimoto, Japan's all time hits leader and all around amazing guy, is on the lower right card while Katsuya Nomura, #2 on NPB's career home run list is on the top right one.  

Card about a guy's hair and also a guy is looking at the hair guy's butt and the hair guy is kind of floating and its a weird card and you need to buy this card

You want my advice?  You need this card in your collection.

This is a 1975 Calbee card of Takenori Emoto, ace pitcher for the Nankai Hawks.

The card isn't so much about Emoto as it is about his hair.  The title on the back of the card says "With adequate resolve, he cuts his long hair!"

Emoto is a man who likes his hair.  And can you blame him?

But it almost cost him his career in 1975.  Japanese baseball teams have pretty strict rules on haircuts.  These days a lot of NPB teams have relaxed them, but on high school or college teams its like being in the military: everyone gets a buzz cut.

So back in the 1970s Katsuya Nomura was managing the Hawks and banned long hair.  Emoto wasn't about to let go of his splendid hair and rebelled (nobody else on the team joined him).  I did some looking around and found this archival footage of Emoto giving a press conference to explain the reasons for his rebellion.

The long and the short of it is that Nomura threatened to fine him 500,000 Yen, a massive sum back then, and Emoto backed down and got a hair cut.  The scandal that it caused rocked the nation (well not really but it made the news) and elicited a lot of commentary.  This baseball card is devoted to that incident.

The text on the back says:

"With Adequate Resolve, He Cuts His Long Hair!

Nankai's ace pitcher Emoto.  His long hair became the subject of much discussion and attention even as he was breaking records.  He announced that he would cut this long hair into a new short cut and devote himself completely to baseball, making his manager and team mates say "Ah".  He hussles in the middle of training camp in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture."

Inspiring stuff.  I guess. The record it (probably) refers to is perhaps a backhanded compliment, he set the NPB record for balks in 1973.

I like the fact that this card once again demonstrates how ahead of their time these Calbee sets from the 1970s were.  Remember in 1991 when George Steinbrenner and Don Mattingly got into that big public argument over Mattingly's hair?

And then do you remember how Topps, Donruss, Fleer and Upper Deck all made cards about that in their 1992 sets?

Me neither.  Because they didn't.  Because American baseball cards kind of suck in that regard.  Actually Japanese cards kind of suck in that regard today too, no way they would make a card about a similar hair scandal today.  But back in the 70s it was anything goes!  The most glorious card sets ever made.

Also I like this card because there is a guy on it who seems to be totally checking out Emoto's butt, which is also  not something you often see on a baseball card:

Also, if you look at the card photo you have to wonder what is Emoto doing exactly?  He seems to be levitating, with a crowd of people surrounding him.  He is in a baseball pose, but he is standing in front of a hill and I don't think he is on a pitching mound since it is too high relative to the guy looking at his butt.

Anyway, this card has a lot going on in it, all of it fascinating.  Even though Emoto's hair didn't cost him his career, his mouth eventually did.  In 1981 after getting yanked early from a game he publicly suggested that his manager was stupid.  The blowback he received from that (Rule #1 in Japan: Never insult your boss.  Rule #2: no matter how awful something tastes, always say its Oishii even as you are gagging on it) caused his forced retirement shortly thereafter.

My 1976 Yamakatsu Purchase is Confusing the Hell out of Me

 The above is a box of Pro Yakyu "DX" cards produced by Yamakatsu in 1976.  As the red numbers near the bottom indicate, it contains 20 cards which sold for 50 Yen back in the day.  The cards are pretty big so its not a bad deal.

Open it up and you find a couple of bonuses.  There is an extra card, of Sadaharu Oh no less, pasted to the inside flap, so you've got 21 instead of just 20 cards.  Plus there are two albums.

The albums (they are the same) hold three cards each and are specifially "Oh Albums" for storing your Sadaharu Oh cards in.  As is so often the case with cards from the late 70s, recent HOF inductee Koichi Tabuchi makes a prominent cameo behind the plate in the photo.
Spill it all out and this is what you've got!

Its pretty easy to date the set to 1976 thanks to this card, which shows him celebrating his 715th home run (note Tabuchi again making a cameo appearance), which he hit that year.

 There are some other cool cards of hall of famers in the set, like Sachio Kinugasa:

 And Katsuya Nomura:

I like this set a lot, but I'm very confused about what set it is.  Looking at the Engel guide, I'm pretty sure it is the set he catalogues as JY1.  The checklist matches up nicely with the cards I have, the description matches them perfect and the Oh card Engel uses a picture of as an example is identical to the one glued to the flap of the box.

But Engel gives this set the nickname "Blue Box". Because it came in a blue box.  My box is green.

There is another set, JY1c, which is similar and Engel says it came in a green box.  But the checklist for that one is definitely different from mine (the 715 home run Oh card only appears in the checklist for JY1 for example).

There are a few other Yamakatsu sets listed but none of them match this one either. It has to be JY1, but again - green box!

In writing about the late 70s Yamakatsu issues Engel notes, accurately, that "these sets are among the most confusing issues in history" and also acknowledges that there may be some mistakes in the way they were catalogues owing to limited information.  I think my confusion over these would be resolved by recognizing that the JY1 "Blue Box" set was also released in green boxes.

Anyway, this is a cool set either way!

1964 Morinagas!

I finally got me some 1964 Morinagas!

If you live in Japan today you might know Morinaga mainly as the food maker responsible for making powdered milk for coffee which for some reason they called "Creap".  I have a jar of it right next to me as I type this in fact:

If you lived here in 1964 on the other hand you'd probably know them as....well actually even then you'd know them as the company that made Creap.  But you'd also know them as the company which put out probably the best baseball card sets of the 60s, next to Kabaya Leaf.

They issued two sets that year: "Top Star" and "Color Stand" (called "Standups" in Engel).  On the front they are basically the same, a color photo with a glossy finish and white border on a postcard sized card.  The backs differ quite a bit though.  The "Top Star" cards have a pretty simple back which gives some biographical information about the player depicted:

The "Color Stand" cards on the other hand have punch out tabs on them that allow you to fold them out into a little display stand, which is great.  It reminds me a bit of the 1988 Donruss All Star punch out stand ups I used to collect like 30 years ago.

 I picked up a lot of three of these on Yahoo Auctions a few days ago, two Top Stars and one Color Stand.  All three were pretty big names - Sadaharu Oh and Katsuya Nomura were my Top Stars (pictured at the top of this post) and Masaichi Kaneda was my Color Stand:

The three are in great shape and I'm really psyched to finally have some cards from those sets.  The Kaneda card I discovered might be an uncorrected error card.  If you look closely it spells his first name as "Shouichi" on the back instead of "Masaichi".  Both are correct readings for the kanji he uses for his name and its not uncommon for people to make mistakes like that, perhaps the guy editing it just didn't know the correct reading of his name (Japanese is hard because of stuff like this BTW).

Perhaps as interesting as the cards themselves are who I bought them from.  Larry Fuhrmann is kind of a legend among Japanese baseball card collectors since he is one of the most important pioneers in the modern hobby, he even played an important role in the creation of the first BBM set back in 1991.  You can read all about his history on Dave's excellent post here which I highly recommend.  I kind of like the fact that he got his start in Japan as an English teacher in Kobe since that is exactly how I got my start too, only I arrived in Kobe in December of 1999 (hit my twentieth anniversary just 3 days ago!) quite a bit later than him.  

Anyway, he is still in the hobby and runs a great business on Yahoo Auctions as dealer_Larry and I've bought a few things off him before, he is a good source for vintage stuff and I totally recommend keeping him on your watch list as he puts up some really interesting stuff sometimes.  I think he also sells on Ebay too, though I'm not really an Ebay guy anymore so I haven't checked!

Also, and this is something only people who collect cards via Yahoo Auctions Japan can appreciate - the cards arrived all stored in top holders which no Japanese dealer ever does no matter how expensive the cards.  Every other card I've purchased on Yahoo auctions (and there are a lot by now) has come sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard taped together, which is obviously cheaper for the seller but very annoying for the buyer since they never put any thought into the question of whether it will be easy for the buyer to extract the card from the wad of cardboard and tape they encase it in (its never easy to get them out!). 

Another Reason 1970s Calbee Cards are the Best that will Ever Be

Above are a few cards from the 1975 Calbee set (not to be confused with the 1975-76 set) that I have.  You have cards of Japan's all time hits leader (Harimoto), its top three home runs leaders (Oh, Nomura and Kadota), its Iron Man (Kinugasa), its most popular player ever (Nagashima) and one of its best pitchers (Yamada).  I didn't have one handy when I scanned these but if I wanted to I could have added its all time stolen base king (Fukumoto) to the group if I had wanted to.

If you think of the concentration of key figures in the Japanese game into one set (in fact, most sets issued that decade) it is really hard to fathom - almost all of the key career record holders in Japanese history are represented here since their careers overlapped (Nagashima admittedly appearing as a manager rather than player in sets after 73, but still there).  Its like having a set with (career contemporary) cards of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron,Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, Cal Ripken Jr and Mickey Mantle.


The interesting thing is that no NPB set in the future will ever come close to this because almost all of those records are now effectively unbreakable.  Any player who can collect hits, home runs, wins or stolen bases at the pace necessary to challenge any of them is going to be offered a lucrative contract from MLB years before that happens, so it is hard to imagine any player capable of doing so sticking around long enough.  The current active career home run leader is Shinnosuke Abe, whose career is already winding down and might not even reach the 400 plateau before the end.  Harimoto's hits record would likely have been obliterated by now had Ichiro not gone to the Majors and nobody else is even close.

So the 1970s in NPB are kind of a unique era in the history of any baseball league.  I can't think of any era in MLB history that comes close.  The dead ball era produced some pitching records that are more or less out of reach (Cy Young's 511 wins) and some non-home run batting records that will likely never be matched (Sam Crawford's career triples), while the 1920s and 1950s produced some of its most iconic figures, but the 1970s in NPB is a bit like if the top players in all those eras competed against each other and all the major career records that they set (as opposed to just a few) became impossible for subsequent generations to break.