Tokyo Yakult Swallows

Meiji Jingu Stadium

The Tokyo Yakult Swallows are a professional baseball team in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. The Swallows are named after their corporate owners, the Yakult Corporation. From 1950 to 1965, the team was owned by the former Japanese National Railways and called the Kokutetsu Swallows; the team was then owned by the newspaper Sankei Shimbun from 1965 to 1968 and called the Sankei Atoms. Yakult purchased the team in 1970 and restored its original Swallows name in 1974. Then it was renamed the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2006.