Yomiuri Giants

The Yomiuri Giants (読売ジャイアンツ, Yomiuri Jaiantsu?) are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The team competes in the Central League in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top level of professional play in Japan. They play their home games in the Tokyo Dome, opened in 1988. The English-language press occasionally calls the team the "Tokyo Giants", but that name has not been in use in Japan for decades. Instead, the team is officially known by the name of its corporate owner just like the Hanshin Tigers and Orix Buffaloes. The team's owner is the Yomiuri Group, a media conglomerate which includes two newspapers and a television network. The Yomiuri Giants are regarded as "The New York Yankees of Japan" due to their widespread popularity, past dominance of the league, and polarizing effect on fans (baseball fans who feel ambivalent about teams other than their local team often have an intense dislike for the Giants; on the other hand, the Giants have a large fan base even in areas with a local team).

The Giants are the oldest team among the current Japanese professional teams. Lefty O'Doul, a former Major League Baseball player, named the team "Tokyo Giants". Yomiuri Giants name and uniforms were based on the New York (now San Francisco) Giants. The team's colors (orange and black) are the same colors worn by the National League's Giants, both in New York and San Francisco. The stylized lettering on the team's jerseys and caps is similar to the fancy lettering used by the Giants when they played in New York in the 1930s, although during the 1970s the Giants modernized their lettering to follow the style worn by the American Giants. The Giants' main rivalry is with the Hanshin Tigers, a team especially popular in the Kansai region.

The team is often referred by fans and in news headlines and tables simply as Kyojin (巨人), instead of the usual corporate owner's name or the English nickname.