College Baseball season in Japan

College Baseball season in Japan

In Japan, there are 2 big national championship tournaments are held in June and November. 

About 25 champion teams go to those tournaments for the National Championship.

To qualify for those tournaments, each college baseball team has 2 months round-robin tournaments at their own local leagues.

Spring season: April and May, and fall season: September and October;

those are the regular seasons for college baseball team in Japan.

Usually, one local league has layers of 6 teams, like 

Hokkaido College League: Div. I, Div. II, III, IV, 

Tokyo New College League: Div. I, Div. II, III, etc. 

and each division has 6 teams.

Although only the champion team at Div. I goes to the national tournament, but every team has chance to be Div. I team. 

I’ll explain;

At the end of 2 month round-robin games, there are post season games;

one best-of-3 series, called “Irekae-Sen (Replacement Games)” . 

The last-place team and the top team in the lower league have this post season games.

A team which win the Irekae-Sen, goes up (or remain at) the higher division in the next season. 

So even if you are Div. III team, you can go up to Div. I in 2 seasons, which is 1 year.