The American Baseball Influence In Japan
Nothing beats sitting in a ballpark with cold beer in one hand and watching your favorite player hammer the ball with frenzied effort as it vanishes into the horizon. Baseball has long been the country’s go-to sport since almost 200 years – a long time considering the fact that the modern version of the sport has evolved into the symbol of American culture, its favorite pastime. This pastime however, has proven to be contagious.
When Maine-born professor Horace Wilson was invited by Japan’s ‘Meiji’ regime as a foreign adviser to implement Western ideologies in the Japanese education system, little did he know that his introduction of baseball as a much-needed physical exercise in 1870’s would grow to be the developing nation’s most preferred sport and one of the world’s most important baseball leagues. He managed to bring the sport into the spotlight with the help of fellow railway engineer Hiroshi Hiraoka, who translated the convoluted rules of the game to newbies in Japan. It wasn’t until the end of 19th century that baseball started gaining pace. University of Wisconsin was America’s first ambassador of the sport to Japan, followed by collegiate teams of Stanford, Harvard, Indiana, Illinois and Washington universities.
Tsuneo Matsudaira, a Japanese diplomat, in his address to the Japan Society of the UK in London in 1907, noted: “The game spread like fire in a dry field in summer, all over the country and some months afterwards, even children in primary schools in the country far away from Tokyo were to be seen playing with bats and balls.”
The game began sinking its roots as the 20th century progressed. Media magnate Matsutaro Shoriki is credited with nationalizing the modern game in Japan, thereby earning the title as the father of Japanese professional baseball. In an era where heightened tensions started brewing between the Axis Powers led by Germany, Italy and Japan, against the Allied Powers spearheaded by the United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain, none could have predicted an American sport gaining stronghold in the island country. Shoriki assembled ‘The Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club’ in 1934 and led the club to success against a legendary all-star American team that included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer, Lefty Gomez and Jimmie Foxx. This is regarded as the first step in the development of Japan’s first professional baseball league in 1936, just before the onset of World War II. The 1934 invasion of baseball marked the beginning of a sporting legacy for Japan, thanks to Babe Ruth and his teammates’ 18-game tour of the country. To this day, Ruth’s heroic statue stands tall in the Yagiyama Zoological Park in Sendai, paying homage to his first home run in Japan.
The country’s now famous Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league was founded in 1950. Since then, Japan has established itself as a powerhouse in the sport. From the onset of the 50’s, exhibition games between American teams such as San Francisco Seals, Brooklyn Dodgers and Japanese clubs started gaining pace. Americans, among other nationalities, were invited to sign with the country’s clubs as each team was permitted to have two foreigners in its roster.
Although anti-American sentiments were still substantially present within the Japanese society due to the Hiroshima-Nagasaki disaster and the horrifying war of the previous decade, baseball, up to an extent managed to alleviate scars. This is largely credited to the perseverant and valiant Wally Yonamine, who endured insults and was even subject to threats by the Yakuza. He was a Hawaiian-born Japanese-American ball player who became the first American to play professional baseball in Japan after World War II, changing the landscape of the sport in the country forever. In the next fifty years, more than 500 Americans would follow Yonamine’s suit and sign with Japanese clubs.
On the other hand, more than 60 Japanese players have ended up playing in the MLB – with the first instance occurring in 1964 when Nankai Hawks’ Masanori Murakami ended up playing for the San Francisco Giants. Murakami held that record for thirty odd years as pitcher Hideo Nomo became only the second in 1995 with Los Angeles Dodgers.
Japan’s baseball rules are essentially those of Major League Baseball. However, technical elements such as unique European-modelled foreign player restrictions, smaller baseballs, downsized playing fields and 28-player rosters instead of MLB’s 26, are slightly different in the current playing regulations of NPB.
According to statistics provided by bookmakers, NPB garners the second-highest attention of players and punters when it comes to betting on baseball, just behind – you guessed it – MLB. Anyone interested can place their hand by learning about the best sportsbooks to invest it, favourable odds-on-favourites and basic guides to understand the nuances of the game itself.
America’s influence of the game has spread far and wide, including but not restricted to countries such as South Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Italy and Australia. But its influence has been rarely as influential elsewhere than in Japan. From resolving political diplomacy issues to being a bridge between polar cultures, the role of baseball in US-Japan relations cannot be understated.
