I'm kind of confused about the timing of the set. The set was released in March of 2025 but has a 2024 "cover date", implying that Epoch had intended to release the set in 2024. But Topps had the Samurai Japan baseball card license in 2024 so I don't understand how Epoch could have released the set then. It's possible (and, in fact, very likely) that I don't fully understand how the Samurai Japan licensing works - especially since BBM had included Samurai Japan cards in the 2023 Infinity set when Topps had the license and Bushiroad is putting out DreamOrder Samurai Japan cards next month (while I assume Epoch still has the license but maybe they don't).
The set features retired (OB) players who have either played for or managed Samurai Japan (or, as it was known before 2013, the Japanese National Baseball Team). I should specify that it's only players and managers of the professional version of the team, so basically we're talking players from the past 20-ish years who took part in the major tournaments (Olympics, World Baseball Classic and Premier 12), minor tournaments like the Asia Professional Baseball Championship and all the various friendly matches over the past 12 years or so with Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Team Euro and the MLB All Stars. All the players are depicted in their national team uniforms.
I mentioned that the base set contains 26 cards but there's only 25 people featured in the set. Hirokazu Ibata, the current Samurai Japan manager, has two cards - one as a player and one as manager. The other managers are Sadaharu Oh (manager of the 2006 WBC champs) and Hideki Kuriyama (manager of the 2023 WBC champs).
The remaining 22 players are kind of a mixed bag. There's some fairly big names in the set - Norichika Aoki, Yoshio Itoi, Hisashi Iwakuma, Munenori Kawasaki, Nobuhiro Matsuda, Michihiro Ogasawara and Seiichi Uchikawa - but it's really missing the big stars from the 00's WBC and Olympic teams like Ichiro, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Koji Uehara, Kosuke Fukedome, Kenji Johjima, Shinnosuke Abe and Nobuhiko Matsunaka. There's a lot of guys who were minor stars - Shunsuke Watanabe, Ryosuke Hirata, Motohiro Shima, Kazuhisa Makita and Yusuke Nomura - but I'm not sure how much of a draw any of them are.
I have most of the Japanese National Team cards and sets since...well, since 2000, when Upper Deck issued a set for the Japanese delegation to the 2000 Sydney Olympics which included most of the baseball team. So I sat down and went through this set to figure out if there's anyone in it that hadn't appeared on a card in a National Team uniform issued by Upper Deck, Topps, BBM or Calbee. I found only three guys - Tsuyoshi Ishizaki, Ryoma Matsuda and Tomomi Takahashi. All three of these players had relatively short careers and only briefly played for Samurai Japan. Ishizaki played in the 2017 Asia Professional Baseball Championship, Matsuda played in the friendlies against Taiwan in 2013 and Takahashi played against the MLB All Stars in 2014.
There are two other players in the set whose National Team cards are a bit harder to find. Satoshi Komatsu played in the 2009 WBC and is in Konami's Baseball Heroes WBC set. Yoshio Itoi played in the 2013 WBC and only appears in the very rare Konami Samurai Japan set.
The cards themselves are...OK. The photos are mostly "batters batting, pitchers pitching" poses although Samurai Japan cards are uncommon enough that I don't feel like I've seen the same photo for a player over and over like I do with some of the NPB cards. I'm not a big fan of the card design - it seems kind of busy to me. I feel like the design really cramps the photos but, as I've said countless times over the years, I prefer borderless card designs so maybe it's just me. Here's some example cards:
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| #02 |
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| #08 |
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| #13 |
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| #24 |
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| #01 |
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| #12 |
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| #17 |
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| #26 |
I really wanted to like this set, especially since I decided to violate my "not buying any new sets" rule and asked Ryan to pick it up for me (although I can claim it's ok on a technicality - while it was released in 2025, it's REALLY a 2024 set). However, I ended up disappointed with it. I was hoping to get a "this is a good overview of the stars who've played for Samurai Japan" vibe from it and instead I got a vibe of "here's a bunch of Samurai Japan players who were willing to sign autographs for us" which is not an unusual feeling to get from OB player selection in an Epoch set (or BBM for that matter). In addition to the missing players I mentioned above, it would have been nice if the set had included cards of Tatsunori Hara and Koji Yamamoto, the managers of the 2009 and 2013 WBC teams respectively, who've never had National Team cards. Another interesting route Epoch could have taken would ahve been showing players who played for the amateur version of the National Team, especially guys who played on the Olympic teams in the 80's and 90's like Katsumi Hirosawa, Kozo Shoda, Atsuya Furuta, Hideo Nomo, Kenjiro Nomura and Hiroko Kokubo. I've frequently said that I'm a sucker for National Team sets and this was probably my first real disappointment in one of them.
As usual, you can check out all the cards over at Jambalaya to see if you agree with my assessment.
There's been a lot of Samurai Japan posts this past week. I'll get back to some NPB cards from Ryan's shipment next week.
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