2025 Japan Series
| 2025 Japan Series | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Dates | October 25–30 | |||||||||
| Venue(s) | Mizuho PayPay Dome (SoftBank) Koshien Stadium (Hanshin) | |||||||||
| MVP | Hotaka Yamakawa (SoftBank) | |||||||||
| FSA | Teruaki Sato (Hanshin) | |||||||||
| Umpires | Shoji Arisumi, Hidetomo Ashihara, Kohei Makita, Naoto Shikita, Kazuyuki Shirai, Takahiro Tsuchiyama, Tetsuo Yamaji | |||||||||
| Broadcast | ||||||||||
| Television | TBS, NHK-BS, Fuji TV, TV Asahi, ABC, NNN, TVer, U-Next, Abema, Hulu | |||||||||
| TV announcers | Norihiro Akahoshi, Koji Akiyama, Shoma Hiramatsu, Ken Iguchi, Chikafusa Ikeda, Masao Inoue, Masayuki Kakefu, Munenori Kawasaki, Hiromi Makihara, Nobuhiro Matsuda, Akinobu Okada, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Junichi Takano, Shingo Takatsu, Yohei Takeshita, Takashi Toritani, Seiichi Uchikawa | |||||||||
| Japan Series program | ||||||||||
The 2025 Japan Series (日本シリーズ, Nippon Shirīzu; branded as the SMBC Nippon Series 2025 for sponsorship reasons) was the championship series of Nippon Professional Baseball's (NPB) 2025 season. The 76th edition of the Japan Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff series played between the Central League (CL) Climax Series champion Hanshin Tigers and the Pacific League (PL) Climax Series champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. The Hawks defeated the Tigers in five games.
SoftBank returned to the Japan Series for the second consecutive year after losing the previous year to the CL's third-seeded team. This was their 22nd overall appearance, a new PL record. For Hanshin, this was their eighth Japan Series overall appearance, with their last coming in 2023, a series that they won to secure their first championship in 38 years. The Hawks won all three previous meetings between the two teams in the championship round, with the last time being 2014. As per NPB tradition, home field advantage was awarded to the Pacific League team, as the Central League team held advantage the previous year.
Hanshin clinched their first CL championship in two years on September 7, the earliest pennant win in CL history. Kyuji Fujikawa, former Tiger and Major League player, led the team to the pennant in his first year as manager. They finished the season 13 games ahead of the second-place Yokohama DeNA BayStars, and as winners of the CL, they advanced directly to the final stage of the CL Climax Series where they hosted the BayStars. The Tigers began the best-of-six series with a one-win advantage and swept the next three games against DeNA to advance. SoftBank clinched their second straight PL championship late in the season after a close race with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. Injuries to key players contributed to a slow start and forced manager Hiroki Kokubo to dip into the team's depth early. They bounced back after April and played well in the final five months of the season, including an interleague title. SoftBank moved directly to the final stage of the PL Climax Series with an automatic one-win advantage over the Fighters and won the first two games to make it 3–0. However, Nippon-Ham came back to win the next three games and tie the series at three games apiece. The Hawks went on to win Game 6 to advance to the Japan Series.
In a reflection of the 2014 Japan Series between the Tigers and Hawks, in which the Tigers won Game 1, but lost Games 2–5 to allow the Hawks to win the Japan Series, Game 1 was once again won by the Tigers, their first ever Japan Series win in Fukuoka in eight games. However, Ukyo Shuto's record-breaking five-hit game contributed to SoftBank's 14 total hits that powered the Hawks to a 10–1 victory in Game 2 to tie the series. The next two games were tight contests ultimately won by SoftBank, in part thanks to home runs hit by Hotaka Yamakawa in both. With home runs in Games 2, 3, and 4, Yamakawa tied the record for most consecutive Japan Series games with a home run. The Hawks clinched their 12th Japan Series championship at Koshien Stadium in Game 5, doing so in extra innings for their first Japan Series victory in five years and their eighth title since 2011. SoftBank's Yamakawa was named the Japan Series Most Valuable Player.