Pillbox Hats In NPB

I've been seeing some coverage lately of the pillbox hats that MLB teams wore for the 1976 All Star games (and some teams continued wearing afterwards) and thought it'd be fun to do a quick post about when NPB teams wore similar hats on a couple occasions.  Oddly enough, however, baseball cards showing these hats are almost non-existent.  I only know of two, and, bizarrely, they are both from the same set which was issued 30-ish years after the hats were used.

I'll be relying on my usual uniform references for this post - the book The History of Uniform (HOU) and the mook Professional Baseball Uniform Encyclopedia 1934-2013 (PBU).

Now, obviously, the bicentennial of the United States was not something that merited a major celebration in Japan, but NPB decided to adopt pillbox hats for the 1979 All Star games (there were three that year) to celebrate the league's 30th Anniversary - or, more accurately, the 30th season after the Japan Baseball League (JBL) reorganized itself into the two leagues (Central and Pacific) of Nippon Professional Baseball.  HOU does not appear to mention this anywhere but there's a small blurb on it in PBU's section called "How To Dress For The All-Star Game" (p. 86):

The text here mentions that most teams just added stripes to their regular hats but Kintetsu used a completely new design.

The only baseball card I've found that shows one of these hats is from the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set.  Oh had hit his tenth All Star game home run in Game One in Osaka, setting a new record.  He took home the MVP award for that game: 

2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial #50

While there don't appear to be any other baseball cards that show these hats, the interior of one of Calbee's albums that were available as a giveaway in 1979 show a sequence of photos of Tigers pitcher Shigeru Kobayashi wearing it:

The Central League held a post-season East-West All Star game almost every year between 1979 and 1990 (with the exception of 1989).  For the first two years, the players wore special uniforms for this game that included pillbox caps.  Here's the page from HOU describing the uniforms:

The text here erroneously says that this was the first time a pillbox hat was worn in NPB.  The 1979 All Star Series would have been held about three and a half months earlier than the 1979 Central League East-West All Star game.

Here's the blurb from PBU about it:

The 1980 game, held in Nagoya Stadium, was treated as the retirement game for both Sadaharu Oh and Morimichi Takagi.  The photo of Oh's do-age (number three in the above scan) was used on another card in the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set:

2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial #55

This is the only card I've ever seen depicting these uniforms although I did one see some "Fuji Film Photos" of Oh that included shots from this game.

The Pacific League held a similar game off and on between 1981 and 2006 but, as far as I've been able to tell, they never wore the pillbox hats.

The final occurrence that I know about with pillbox hats in NPB was for the 1980 "Junior All Star Game".  This is the minor league All Star game held between the then-two farm leagues - the Eastern and Western Leagues.  (This game is now known as the "Fresh All Star Game").  Normally the players in this game wear their team's uniform but for the 1980 game, they wore special uniforms that included pillbox hats.  Here's the writeup from HOU:

Here's the blurb from PBU:

As far as I know, there are no baseball cards that feature players wearing these uniforms and hats.