The March 15, 2012 Report - ¥3.6 Billion for Six Players
On the front page of its March 15, 2012 morning edition, the Asahi Shimbun reported that the Yomiuri Giants had signed six rookies who joined the club between fiscal 1997 and 2004 to contracts worth a combined ¥3.6 billion. The maximum standard signing bonus the clubs had agreed on was ¥150 million per player: a ¥100 million bonus plus ¥50 million in performance incentives. According to the report, the six contracts went far beyond that, with the excess totaling ¥2.7 billion.
| Player | Draft year and route | Amount announced at signing | Amount reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yoshinobu Takahashi | 1997, reverse nomination, 1st round | ¥100 million + ¥50 million incentives | ¥650 million |
| Koji Uehara | 1998, reverse nomination, 1st round | ¥100 million + ¥50 million incentives | ¥500 million + ¥150 million merit payment |
| Tomohiro Nioka | 1998, reverse nomination, 2nd round | (no record) | ¥500 million + ¥70 million merit payment + ¥20 million incentives |
| Shinnosuke Abe | 2000, reverse nomination, 1st round | ¥100 million + ¥50 million incentives | ¥1 billion |
| Tetsuya Utsumi | 2003, free-acquisition slot | (no record) | ¥250 million |
| Takahiko Nomaguchi | 2004, free-acquisition slot | (no record) | ¥700 million |
Adding up only the signing-bonus portions in the table gives ¥3.6 billion, matching the reported total; the merit payments and incentives were reported separately from the bonuses. For the three players whose announced terms are on record, the announced figures matched the agreed standard, and when Takahashi joined, the club said it had prepared "the highest amount." The reported bonuses, excluding merit payments and incentives, were three to seven times those figures.
As for how the large sums stayed hidden, the Asahi reported that they were paid in installments over several years so the players would not appear on the published lists of high-income taxpayers. In Nioka's case, the portion above the standard was spread over several years and paid when he met some of each year's incentive conditions. Yomiuri treated those incentive payments as installments of the signing bonus for tax purposes, and Nioka himself indicated in his tax filings that they were part of the bonus. Uehara's first-year salary was ¥33 million, yet his uniform player contract listed ¥13 million. The club also disclosed that Nomaguchi had received a little over ¥2 million from the Yomiuri side on several occasions around 2004, before he joined. Club president Tsunekazu Momoi said, "It is not a violation at all. It simply did not rise to the level of needing disclosure."
What the Maximum Standard Amount Was - An Agreement That Was Not a Cap
The maximum standard amount dates to 1993, when the reverse nomination system was introduced and the 12 clubs agreed on a maximum standard signing bonus of ¥100 million. From the following year it became a gentlemen's agreement of a ¥100 million bonus plus ¥50 million in incentives. In June 2001, the executive committee confirmed that this was "a standard amount, not a cap," and Tadao Koike, then president of the Pacific League, said in effect that the clubs should protest against reports treating payments above it as under-the-table money.
Because it was not a cap, several clubs prepared large bonuses, and money also changed hands outside the bonus under labels such as merit payments, nutrition allowances, tuition, meal money, travel expenses and pocket money. The standard became a cap backed by sanctions only in October 2007, when the 12 clubs agreed to limit the signing bonus to ¥100 million and incentives to 50% of the bonus, with any higher amount requiring an application.
That agreement was triggered by problems at Seibu and Yokohama, and the comparison shows the scale of Yomiuri's spending. At Seibu it came to light in 2007 that 15 players had been paid signing bonuses above the standard totaling ¥1.19 billion. On April 11, 2007, Yokohama disclosed that it had paid Takumi Nasuno, who joined through the free-acquisition slot in 2004, a ¥530 million bonus. Yomiuri's ¥3.6 billion for six players was about three times Seibu's total for 15 players and about seven times Nasuno's bonus.
Yomiuri's Rebuttal and the Reaction Across the Game
The Yomiuri Giants took the position that no rule had been broken. On March 15, 2012, the Yomiuri Shimbun, part of the same Yomiuri Shimbun group as the club, reported that an NPB legal adviser and a then member of the executive committee who had been president of the Nippon-Ham club took the same view. So did Hiroshima's Kiyoaki Suzuki, Hanshin club president Minami and Yokohama manager Kiyoshi Nakahata, and on March 16 the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that almost no one in the game voiced understanding for the Asahi report. On the other side, Chunichi club representative Ryohei Sato and Yakult public relations chief Hajime Kawashima stressed the need to honor the agreement (Asahi Shimbun Digital, March 15, 2012).
Other voices, inside and outside the game, spoke less about whether a rule was broken than about how deep the practice ran. Takenori Emoto said it was something other clubs had done as well, not just Yomiuri (Sports Nippon, March 15, 2012), and Masayuki Tamaki called it a bad tradition coming to light once again (same paper, March 16). Yokohama general manager Shigeru Takada said in effect that before the Ichiba affair it had existed to some degree at every club, but that the matter was being left alone (same paper, March 16).
The Yomiuri Shimbun protested to the Asahi Shimbun, and the Asahi replied that it had reported an "excess over the maximum standard amount," not "under-the-table money." The Yomiuri side explained that the figure had been kept as a standard rather than a cap out of concern about the Antimonopoly Act. But at a regular press conference on March 28, 2012, the secretary general of the Japan Fair Trade Commission said this would not immediately violate the act, and revealed that the commission had given the same answer orally when the baseball world consulted it in 1994.
As the club suspected that internal documents had leaked, Hidetoshi Kiyotake, who had been dismissed as club representative and general manager in November 2011, commented that he had "had nothing whatsoever to do with past contracts," and the club retorted that "Mr. Kiyotake's comment contains lies" (Jiji Press, March 19, 2012). The background to his dismissal is covered in the article on the Kiyotake revolt. Four of the players, Takahashi, Abe, Utsumi and Nomaguchi, joined the club in demanding a correction and an apology from the Asahi, and on April 28, 2012 the four filed a complaint with the Asahi Shimbun's Press and Human Rights Committee. On July 12, the committee published its view that the report was true and did not amount to defamation.
The Lawsuit - The Excess Was Found True, and Yomiuri Won ¥3.3 Million
The Yomiuri Giants sued the Asahi Shimbun Company, claiming its reputation had been damaged and seeking ¥55 million in damages, among other demands. On September 28, 2015, the Tokyo District Court found the report true and dismissed the claim. The club's public relations department called it "an unjust ruling based on a misreading of the facts" and said it would appeal.
On June 8, 2016, the Tokyo High Court, with Judge Izumi Takizawa presiding, revised the first ruling. Like the lower court, it found true the core of the report: that the six players' bonuses, totaling ¥3.6 billion, had far exceeded the agreed ¥150 million per player. It then ruled untrue a passage that could be read as saying Yomiuri would face sanctions in the same way other clubs that had paid excessive bonuses had received strict warnings from NPB, and ordered the Asahi Shimbun Company to pay ¥3.3 million. According to a J-CAST report, the court held that supplemental compensation payments differ in nature from a signing bonus and found part of the article inaccurate. The club's public relations department called it "an appropriate ruling in that it found the report to be wrong," while the Asahi's public relations department said, "It is unjust to rule that the part introducing other clubs' cases was defamatory. We will immediately file an appeal."
On November 24, 2016, the First Petty Bench of the Supreme Court, with Justice Masayuki Ikegami presiding, decided not to accept either side's appeal, and the High Court ruling became final. The club's public relations department said, "We consider it appropriate that the ruling recognizing defamation of the club has become final," while the Asahi's public relations department said, "We take it that the core of the article was recognized as true."
Both sides claimed a win, but the substance of the final ruling is clear. What Yomiuri won was ¥3.3 million for the passages found to be wrong, and it never managed to deny the excess itself.
The Link to the Ichiba Affair - Contracts Signed Before Any Sanction Existed
In 2004 it came to light that Yomiuri had given about ¥2 million to Yasuhiro Ichiba of Meiji University, and owner Tsuneo Watanabe resigned. Hanshin (about ¥250,000) and Yokohama (about ¥600,000) had also given Ichiba money. The affair is covered in the article on the reverse nomination system, and payments to amateur players across the game in the article on NPB's under-the-table money culture.
The six contracts from fiscal 1997 to 2004 predate the October 2007 cap that first set sanctions, and under the 2001 confirmation that the standard was "not a cap" and a gentlemen's agreement with no sanctions, they stayed beyond the reach of any penalty. And in the 2004 draft, the same year its owner resigned over the Ichiba affair, Yomiuri still signed Nomaguchi through the free-acquisition slot for ¥700 million.
How to Read This and Its Limits
The amounts in this article come from the Asahi Shimbun report, whose core was found true in the final ruling. The report, however, gave only the total excess of ¥2.7 billion; how much each player received above the standard was not reported. This article also does not go into how the merit payments were paid out.
Only Yomiuri, Seibu and Yokohama have had such payments disclosed by the club itself or brought to light by the press. Whether other clubs paid similar excess amounts has been neither investigated nor disclosed. The date on which the Yomiuri Giants filed suit against the Asahi Shimbun Company could not be confirmed.