unlike american pro teams, japanese baseball league teams were usually named after their corporate owners/sponsors rather than the cities or regions in which they played. this was because japanese franchising does not have strong territorial requirements as in the major leagues; as a result, the jbl teams clustered in metropolitan areas in japan's center (tokyo, nagoya) and south (osaka). as a result, teams were notorious for how often they changed their names, often because of changes in ownership/sponsorship (and also because of nationalistic regulations imposed during wartime, such as the outlawing of english team names). (the yomiuri giants, the chunichi dragons, and the hanshin tigers are the only surviving major clubs that have always been based in their respective cities. additionally, the current orix buffaloes are a merger of two clubs which never left their hometown.)