It won't be long before the Yomiuri Giants' Shinnosuke Abe breaks through the 2,000-hit threshold. Abe has 1,994 now, so it's only a matter of time before he becomes the 49th player to reach the mark in NPB alone.
Abe should be followed in short order by both Seiichi Uchikawa, who has 1,970 with the Yokohama BayStars and Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, his current club, and the Hanshin Tigers' Takashi Toritani, who has 1,965 at the moment. Further down the line are the Chiba Lotte Marines' Kazuya Fukuura (who is 41 years old and may run out of time) at 1,950 and Shuichi Murata, who has 1,824 during his career with the BayStars and now the Giants.
While those players are on track to follow Abe into the 2,000-hit club, it's likely (probable, really) none will be able to take the path Adrian Beltre recently walked in the majors and reach 3,000, an almost-mythical number in Japanese baseball. Further on down the line, however, the Giants' Hayato Sakamoto is building a case to climb NPB's Mt. Everest.