Shinji Hamazaki

There's something quietly moving about Shinji Hamazaki — a guy born in 1901 in the port town of Kure, Hiroshima, who somehow made it all the way to Keio University and chased a baseball career at a time when "professional baseball player" was barely even a concept in Japan. Standing 154 centimeters tall by modern measurements, he was never going to look physically imposing, but that's kind of the point — this was an era when the game was still being wired into Japanese culture from scratch, and the guys who built that foundation did it through sheer stubbornness and love for the sport, not ESPN highlights. I don't know his stat lines, and honestly the historical record is thin, but that's true for a lot of the early pioneers who made modern Japanese baseball possible. He played, he lived through the whole arc of the 20th century, and he deserves a nod.

Shinji Hamazaki was a Japanese baseball player born on December 10, 1901, in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture. He studied at Keio University, making him an educated figure in the early era of Japanese baseball. He stood 154 cm tall and passed away on May 6, 1989.

Name (English)

Shinji Hamazaki

Name (Japanese)

浜崎真二

Reading

はまざき しんじ

Born

December 10, 1901 – May 6, 1989

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Ox

Origin

Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

Height

154 cm

Occupation

Baseball player

University

Keio University

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%9C%E5%B4%8E%E7%9C%9F%E4%BA%8C
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7497577

Tags

• From Hiroshima Prefecture
• Baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.