Takao Katsuragi

That era of Japanese baseball had something almost mythological about it: packed stadiums, hand-me-down gloves, kids plastering players' names across their notebooks because these guys were the nearest thing to heroes the neighborhood had. Details on Katsuragi specifically are thin, and honestly that scarcity itself says something about how many Showa-era ballplayers gave everything to the game and got precious little documentation in return. He made it to 76, passing in 2013, which means he lived long enough to see Japanese baseball go global and all the records go digital — and I hope someone, somewhere, told him he mattered. That generation deserves better than a footnote.

Takao Katsuragi (December 21, 1936 – July 27, 2013) was a Japanese professional baseball player born in Oita City, Oita Prefecture. He was active during the postwar era of Japanese baseball, a period when the sport held enormous cultural prominence across the country. He passed away on July 27, 2013, at the age of 76.

Name (English)

Takao Katsuragi

Name (Japanese)

葛城隆雄

Reading

かつらぎ たかお

Born

December 21, 1936 – July 27, 2013

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Rat

Origin

Oita City, Oita Prefecture, Japan

Height

173 cm

Occupation

Baseball player

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%91%9B%E5%9F%8E%E9%9A%86%E9%9B%84
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11620924

Tags

• From Oita 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.