Yokohama Athletic Club was a club of foreigners, predominantly Americans

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, in Yokohama

Yokohama

is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...

 Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. In the late-19th century the athletic club

Sports club

A sports club or sport club, sometimes athletics club or sports association is a club for the purpose of playing one or more sports...

 was challenged by Ichiko, an elite Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 preparatory school. The matches were popular and won handily by the Japanese. The scores of the first four games spanning from the 1890s to the early 1900s between Japan’s Ichiko and the American Yokohama Athletic Club teams were: 29 – 4, 32 – 9, 22 – 6, and 14 – 12.

Sources

• Roden, Donald. “Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity in Meiji Japan.” The American Historical Review
  American Historical Review
  The American Historical Review is the official publication of the American Historical Association, established in 1895 "for the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts, and the dissemination of historical research." It targets readers...
  
  , Vol. 85, No. 3 (Jun., 1980), 511-534.