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Cultural Studies

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Double binding of Japanese colonialism:trajectories of baseball in Japan, Taiwan, andKorea

Younghan Cho

To cite this article: Younghan Cho (2015): Double binding of Japanese colonialism:trajectories of baseball in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, Cultural Studies, DOI:10.1080/09502386.2015.1094498

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2015.1094498

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Double binding of Japanese colonialism: trajectoriesof baseball in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea†

Younghan Cho

Department of Korean Studies, Graduate School of International and Area Studies, HankukUniversity of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea

ABSTRACTThis study explores the historic implications of baseball within the largerprocesses of constructing modernity under Japanese colonialism byexamining the game’s regional trajectory, with a focus on its introduction andproliferation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Althoughbaseball was initially introduced into the region as a symbol of Americanmodernity, it was spread and popularized by Imperial Japan. By examiningthe ways that baseball was received and appropriated in Japan, Taiwan, andKorea, this study demonstrates that its trajectory reflects not only colonizationby both the USA and Japan but resistance that amounted to a doublede-colonization against both of these entities. The term ‘double binding’ isheuristically used to illustrate both Japanese imperialism and postcolonialconsciousness in its (former) colonies, in which the USA and Japan functionedas a pair of modernizing/imperial forces and as the objects of de-colonization.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 2 January 2015; Revised 8 May 2015; Accepted 6 July 2015

KEYWORDS Japanese imperialism; colonial modernity; East Asia; modern sport; baseball; postcolonialism

Introduction

By the early twentieth century, most Asian countries were undergoing mod-ernization under either semi- or fully colonized conditions. Recognition ofthe connections between colonization and modernization has been thebasis for several academic attempts to illuminate East Asian coloniality/mod-ernity (Barlow 1997a, Shin and Robinson 1999, Lee and Cho 2012). Whatmakes coloniality/modernity in East Asia unique is Japan’s emergence asthe region’s sole non-Western imperial power. Due to Japan’s distinct andeven ambivalent roles in relation to its colonies and the colonized, the familiarduality of West and non-West cannot be applied to the East Asian context.This study explores baseball’s trajectories in both the Japanese Empire and

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

CONTACT Younghan Cho c.younghan@hotmail.com†Earlier versions of the paper were presented at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) in March2010, Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore (Singapore) in March 2010 and AsianCultural and Media Studies Research Cluster at Monash University (Australia) in November 2013.

CULTURAL STUDIES, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2015.1094498

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its colonies in order to illuminate the specificity of Japanese colonialism aswell as of the postcolonial consciousness in the region. The case of baseballis particularly illuminating because its early trajectory was undertaken by apair of colonizers, the USA and Japan, to introduce the game to this region,where it was adopted early and appropriated as a symbol of modernity. Fur-thermore, the colonized utilized baseball as a tool for both appeasing andcontesting their colonizers. In this respect, this study aims to locate sport asanother important venue in which modernizing processes in connectionwith imperial forces, industrialization, and commercialization were conductedin the Asia-Pacific region.

Within the contexts of East Asia, the introduction and diffusion of modernsports in the late nineteenth century were accompanied by the installation ofmodern institutions, practices, and knowledge, as well as encroachment byimperial forces. At the same time, modern sports also generated severalmodes of modernization: the displacement of traditional sports, innovationswithin educational systems, and the invention of sports cultures. Amongthe many modern sports, baseball is particularly significant in East Asia. Notonly does it symbolize a specifically American type of modernity, as the Amer-ican national pastime, but Imperial Japan also played a crucial role in popular-izing it. Baseball was first introduced into Japan in the late nineteenth centuryby American missionaries, but it was the passion of Japanese soldiers, admin-istrators, and educators that enabled the game to survive and prosperthroughout its colonies.

As the sole non-Western empire and the primary colonizing force in EastAsia, Japan competed not only against the USA for confirmation of its imperialposition but also against its colonized in order to demonstrate its superiority.My use of the term ‘double binding’ is meant to heuristically illuminate thespecificity of Japanese colonialism and of the postcolonial consciousness inthe region that developed as a consequence of the convergence of Americanand Japanese empires at the same time. Finally, double binding indicatesboth the possibilities of and limits to the region’s de-colonization andde-imperialization.

The case of baseball in East Asia provides a good site for viewing the issuesof globalization ‘as being long-term processes that have occurred unevenlyacross all areas of the planet’ (Maguire 1999, p. 3). Over the past fewdecades, the global expansion of American sports encourages researchersto investigate sport as a ‘crucial site where populations are targeted by differ-ent forms of governmental and commercial knowledge/power’ (Miller et al.2001, p. 2). Due to the current proliferation of American sports in Asia, theimperative to examine the globalization of American sport in the PacificRim has grown stronger. In this vein, this study will contribute to understand-ing the development of modern sport in the context of East Asian civilizingprocesses. Furthermore, the exploration of the early baseball trajectory will

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aid the understanding of the contemporary developments of global sportsand their impacts on commerce, governmentality, and culture historicallyand comparatively. Against the sociologists' trend of retreating into thepresent (Dunning and Krieken 1997), this study also attests that the expla-nation of the globalization of sports and modernizing processes ‘must be rela-tional and, above all, historical in character’ (Dunning 2002, p. 213).

Japanese imperialism and double colonization

Barlow’s seminal edited volume, Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia,introduced colonial modernity as a speculative frame for investigating thepervasive discursive powers that reference the globalizing impulses of inter-national capitalism (Barlow 1997a). One of its fundamental questions concerns‘the role that the Great Powers, Japan and the USA, played in shaping colonialrelations’ (Barlow 2012, p. 632). The inseparability of colonization andmodern-ization, however, is not unique to East Asia; in fact, many parts of the worldhave undergone similar processes. By referring to ‘this double edge as mod-ernity/coloniality’, Mignolo suggested coloniality as ‘the reverse and unavoid-able side of “modernity” – its darker side’ (2000, p. 22). Current scholarshipagrees that coloniality and modernity are indivisible features of the historyof industrial capitalism, in the West and other societies (Barlow 1997b). None-theless, coloniality/modernity in East Asia ‘would exhibit a different aspectfrom what one would find in Latin America, Africa, or some other parts ofAsia’ (Paik 2000, p. 74).

As Imperial Japan emerged as the dominant force in this region, manyWestern systems, practices, and vocabularies were appropriated by Japanesemodernizers and re-introduced to China, Taiwan, and Korea as part of colonialendeavours. Consequently, East Asian modernities ‘grew out of a fusion ofJapanese and Western ideas’ before being appropriated, adopted, andadapted within Japan’s colonies, a process that Kikuchi called ‘refracted mod-ernity’ (Kikuchi 2007a, p. 8). This refracted condition implies not only that itsconstructions are multiple and transferable, but also that these were followedby a degree of local modification, including the imposition of ‘a Japaneseversion of Orientalism onto the rest of Asia’ (Kikuchi 2007b, p. 222). In otherwords, the installation and popularization of many modern institutions andpractices were refracted via Imperial Japan, the regional imperialist/colonizer,transferred to Japan’s colonies, and normalized under Japanese imperialism(Kikuchi 2007b).

Furthermore, the Japanese occupation of East Asia was also crucial to thepostcolonial consciousness and de-colonizing procedure of the region.Because the Japanese were not utterly different from their colonizers, eitherracially or culturally (Ching 1998), the colonizers and the colonized oftencompete against each other in terms of modern skills, knowledge, bodies,

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and so forth under Japanese imperialism. During theprocess of de-colonization,it was nationalism, not racism, that conceptualized the contestations, struggles,and hatreds between the ex-colonizers and the ex-colonized.Moreover, after itsdefeat in WWII, Japan was forced to turn over its position as the region’s hege-monic power to the USA without undertaking any de-colonizing procedures.Under the Cold War regime administered by the USA, Japan was partly exoner-ated from accusations of war crimes and became a solid ally of the USA.

These peculiar conditions of Japanese imperialism imposed a dual set ofobligations upon the colonizers and the colonized. As the colonizer, Japanhad to claim its imperial or superior position by differentiating itself fromAsian countries; however, its efforts were always subject to the approval orlegitimacy granted by the West. During its own period of modernization, Japa-nese intellectuals tried to distinguish Japan from Asia by re-evaluating theirnation; according to one, Taguchi Ukichi, ‘[T]he yellow race does exist, it’sjust that the Japanese do not belong to it!’ (Ching 1998, p. 72). Such passio-nate attempts at self-definition, however, were inevitably conditioned byWhite eyes (Ching 1998). In other words, Japan’s identity has always beenambiguously situated – both with the West and within Asia (Ching 2000). Inits inner territory as well as in its colonies, Japan had to cope, negotiate,and even contest with the West, its superior other. In Japan, therefore, ‘imper-ialization is a double process, one that takes place in the imperial center aswell as in the colonies’ (Chen 2010, p. 7).

For their part, the colonized had to survive within Japan’s territories bydealing with a pair of colonizers. Even as they had to live under the controlof their direct colonizer, Imperial Japan, they deeply admired the West asthe most important emblem of the modern. In other words, Imperial Japanwas the direct object either of appeasement or resistance whereas the Westsupplied the original materials, in terms of both inspiration and actual tech-nologies, for imagining modernity. While Japan remained the immediateand direct oppressor in daily life, America was conceived as a gentlemanly,brotherly nation in the imaginary/fantastic dimension (Yoo 2001). Due to colo-nial ruling by an Asian surrogate, that is, Imperial Japan, Euro-centrism in itscolonies ‘worked more insidiously and effectively’ (Paik 2000, p. 75). Inaddition, Japan also functioned ironically as a mediator and even a competitorfor specific proofs of modernization.

Even after WWII, a similar frame continued to haunt East Asia because, as‘the Cold War system effectively took over the structure of colonialism’, theUSA was substituted for Japan in the minds of ex-colonized (Chen 2001,p. 84). As Yoshimi aptly stated, ‘the decolonization movements in the variousAsian regionswere subverted into theColdWar order andbecamepart of struc-ture of American hegemony’ (Yoshimi and Buist 2003, p. 435). Furthermore,Cold War structures have not been entirely dismantled in East Asia decadesafter the Cold War had officially ended in other places (Chen 2001).

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In the aftermath of both WWII and the Cold War, two Americas appeared inEast Asia. One represented desire and positive identification, and the otherrepresented violence and antipathy (Chua and Cho 2012). In reference tothis postcolonial duality, Japan continued to perform a mediating role thatallowed the triad of ‘Asia-Japan-America’ to remain operative. At the sametime, however, former colonies such as Taiwan and Korea experienced accel-erated economic development and emerged as quasi-imperial forces in theregion. As they often replaced Japan’s mediating position with their ownactivities on the world stage, the formerly colonized began to express long-held sub-imperial desires. For a recent example, the establishment of G2relations between the USA and China (the People’s Republic of China) indi-cates both the current ‘Asian century’ and a regional threat. Within this con-flicting set of identities, Japan’s former colonies in East Asia continue tochallenge Japan and to compete with each other for the attainment of themodernization still symbolized by America. By highlighting the doublenessof Japanese imperialism and its colonies, this study attempts to specifyboth the capabilities and the limits in de-colonial and de-imperial processesin East Asia.

Baseball as the symbol of coloniality/modernity

Modern sports, initially part of the extensive imperial baggage imposed uponthe region by Japan, were adapted during subsequent regional struggles withWestern empires (Mangan 2002). According to Guttmann, modern sports aredefined by ‘a distinctive set of systematically inter-related formal-structuralcharacteristics’ such as secularism, equality, bureaucratization, specialization,rationalization, quantification, and an obsession with records (Guttmann1994, pp. 2–3).1 In East Asia, the introduction of baseball (among othermodern sports) signified the imposition and embrace of a quintessentiallyWestern element.

As a modern invention in East Asia, baseball along with basketball, tennis,and gymnastics was first introduced and promoted through the installation ofmodern educational institutions. In Japan, modern sport was introduced inschools at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912), and mean-while, the Japanese sporting curriculum was heavily influenced by Americans(Szymanski and Zimbalist 2005). For instance, the introduction of baseball toJapan in the early 1870s is created to Horace Wilson, an American missionaryand professor of English and history at Tokyo University. While sports, includ-ing physical education and recreation, have been central to Japan for over acentury, ‘for Japan… the center sport has been baseball’ (Kelly 2011a, p. 252).

In Korea and Taiwan, modern sports were similarly introduced withinmodern educational systems. However, these countries’ modern systemswere mainly established under Japanese colonial rule, which injected

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refracted characteristics into its physical education programmes (Kikuchi2007a). In Korea, the Japanese imperial government used modern sports tosolidify its colonial domination. Consequently, ‘Japanization’ pervaded allareas of modern Korean sport, which ‘served as means of social cohesion,social development and social control’ (Ok 2007a, p. 159). In Taiwan, noformal state education system had been in place prior to Japanese coloniza-tion in 1895 (Lin and Lee 2007); so the Japanese introduced physical edu-cation as an adjunct to modern education when they took over. Primarilypromoted within Taiwan’s new physical education system, ‘baseball was intro-duced as modernizing under the Japanese administration’ (Morris 2004,p. 176).

Missionary centres as another modern institute were primary distributors ofbaseball in East Asia. YMCAs were particularly representative not only becausethe YMCA was the West’s most active exporters to China, Korea, and Japan(Guttmann and Thompson 2001) but because most missionaries were fromAmerica. American Protestant missionaries were responsible for the actualintroduction of Western sports (Kim 2008). In Korea, for example, baseballwas introduced in 1905 by a US missionary named Philip L. Gillett, whotaught the game to members of the Hangsong YMCA in Seoul (Reaves2002). At that time, the YMCA was the only institution among missionschools that offered general physical education, a feature that attracted thebest Korean athletes (Ok 2007a). The YMCA was the place where ‘youngbodies were occupied with wholesome physical activity… and as apathway to the Christian “Kingdom of Heaven”’ (Kim 2008, p. 373). At mission-ary centres, East Asians could learn and practice Western skills as well asWestern belief systems and values such as Christianity, individuality, andliberty.

The ways that baseball was disseminated illuminated its strong connec-tions with modern industry. In Japan, railroad and newspaper companies con-tributed to developing baseball popularity and culture. Railroad engineerHiraoka Hiroshi, for example, returned to Japan after his training in the USAand in 1878 co-established the Shimbashi Athletic Club, the first baseballteam in Japan. In 1915 the Osaka newspaper Asahi Shimbun and the JapanHigh School Baseball Federation organized the National High School BaseballChampionship, commonly known as Summer Koshien. As a true nationalshowdown featuring teams from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures, SummerKoshien remains the most important domestic sporting event in Japan(Kelly 2004). The sponsoring companies of Japan’s first professional league,which was formed at the Japan Industry Club in 1936, consisted of four news-paper publishers and three railroad firms (Kiku 2006). In independent Taiwanand Korea, after WWII, newspaper companies have similarly sponsored highschool baseball tournaments that promoted the continuing popularity ofbaseball (Yu 2007). It is no accident that a similarly close connection

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between baseball and modern industry can be seen in the USA: for example,the organization of the National League was made possible by railroad andpress companies in 1876 (Guttmann 2004). The fact that East Asian menengaged in modern industries in their homelands were among the first toplay and sponsor baseball implies that the game was the very symbol ofAmerican modernity.

Playing baseball often functioned as development and expression ofmodern bodies, tastes, and skills. From its earliest days in Japan, the gamewas treated as a way to engage with Western culture that was bothmodern and fashionable (Kiku 2006). The Waseda University baseball team’sfirst trip to America in 1905 provided a momentum of enlightening Japanesebaseball practitioners by learning scientific systems as well as advanced skillsin Baseball (Tobita 1925).2 For instance, Japanese players began to use spikeshoes instead of Tabi, traditional Japanese socks, and learned a set of newskills such as squeeze play, warming up, and slide (Tobita 1925, pp. 56–69).Baseball practitioners purchased equipment imported from Americawithout any modifications; the high costs associated with this practicemeant that only a limited number of players could be properly outfitted (Gutt-mann and Thompson 2001). In the game’s early days, baseball rulebooks pub-lished in America were translated annually so that the guidelines for Japanesebaseball would be as current as possible. By 1901, the first such translation (ofSpalding’s Official Baseball Guidelines) had gone through seven printings (Gutt-mann and Thompson 2001). In Korea, a 1909 visit by a baseball teammade upof Korean students studying in Tokyo motivated the YMCA baseball team somuch that within a year, they were using regulation equipment and wearinguniforms that featured the YMCA logo. The game required its practitioners toimport and adopt modern practices such as wearing uniforms, followingWestern rules, and adopting Western equipment. Such habits implied an indi-vidual level of modernization including at the bodily level among Asian elites(Yoo 2001). Meanwhile, participating in baseball as a modern sport becamethe symbol for elite status among boys, who were also able to demonstratetheir excellence through their modern skills and prowess in baseball. AsMiller et al. suggest, sport is ‘clearly part of the base and the symbolism of gov-ernment, providing fit bodies and spectacular icons and a populist notion ofcitizenship’ (2001, p. 121).

In East Asia, furthermore, practicing modern sports reflected stronglynational desires such as nation-building and independence based on themodern form of nation-states. As Dirlik highlights, nationalism was a‘product of the latter [colonialism] both historically and in the ideologicalbaggage’ (2002, p. 437). During the Meiji Restoration, when Japan’s leadersembarked upon a campaign of modernization that included the completereorganization of its domestic and educational systems, physical educationwas established accordingly (Guttmann and Thompson 2001). In Korea,

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before Japanese occupation officially began in 1910, several Korean intellec-tuals urged the acceptance of Western systems as a way of achieving modern-ization. They specifically advocated sports as an indispensible means ofbuilding a healthy, powerful, and independent Korea (Ok 2007b). As coloniza-tion proceeded, Korean society further realized ‘that Western culture wouldpositively act as a tool for the advancement of the society in the imperialera’ (Ok 2007a, p. 215).

Because baseball embodied coloniality and modernity, victories on thefield evoked nationalist sentiments throughout East Asia. In Japan, playersand citizens alike boosted their national pride through competitions againstand victories over American baseball teams, whereas in colonized Taiwanand Korea, baseball was regarded as a Western tool for confronting Easternimperialism (i.e. Imperial Japan). Baseball competitions often providedvenues in which the colonized might excel over their colonizers (e.g.Taiwan might beat Japan and Japan might beat the USA). When suchupsets occurred, the news carried nationalist ramifications. While ImperialJapan utilized the game for assimilating and controlling its colonized, thelatter often used it for negotiating with the colonial rule and even for subvert-ing the hierarchy. In this sense, baseball in East Asia also illustrates that globa-lizing processes are ‘the result of a complex interweaving of intended andunintended sets of acts’ in which ‘established (core) and outsider (peripheral)groups and nation-states are constantly vying with each other for dominantpositions’ (Maguire 1999, pp. 39–40).

In East Asia, practicing modern sports, more specifically baseball, was aboutfar more than learning a set of skills: rather, playing baseball exemplified suc-cessive levels of modernization from individual to group or even nationallevels. At the same time, the process of adopting baseball shows that both pro-cesses of diminishing contrasts and increasing varieties were at work betweenthe colonizers and the colonized (Maguire 1999). While explaining civilizingprocesses between Western societies and non-Western societies, Maguireexplains that ‘the contrasts between Western and non-Western people, andtheir societies, did indeed begin to diminish’ (Maguire 1999, p. 44). While base-ball was imported as a by-product of the colonizing policy in Japan, it washeartily embraced as part of American cutting-edge philosophy, andbecame strongly identified with the USA itself (Klein 2006). Such an under-standing of baseball, furthermore, contributes to shedding light on ‘corre-lations between this process [the global spread of modern sports], civilizingprocesses and broader processes of globalisation’ (Dunning 2002, p. 231).

America as the field of dreams

Given that the introduction of baseball to East Asia paralleled modernizationthere, baseball was welcomed throughout the region as a potent symbol of

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modernity. Although American military hegemony proved to be critical to thegame’s regional popularity both before and after WWII, it should be noted thatAsians eagerly adopted baseball due to its magical stamp of ‘Made inAmerica’. In East Asia, baseball was promoted as an embodiment of Americanvalues.

The rivalry between baseball and the exclusively British game of cricket inYokohama well illustrates America’s early contributions to the promotion ofbaseball in Japan. Cricket had arrived along with the nineteenth-centuryBritish military presence, when Brits outnumbered Americans in Yokohamaby three to one and dominated the city’s social and recreational life (Roden1980). After a cricket club consisting of British bowlers and batmen was orga-nized in 1869 (Guttmann and Thompson 2001), the sport flourished for twodecades but began to give way to baseball as the numbers of American resi-dents in Yokohama increased. Just as the decline of cricket paralleled the riseof baseball in Japan, baseball’s rapid march into Japan coincided with GreatBritain’s displacement by America as the premier exporter of modern sports(Roden 1980, Guttmann and Thompson 2001). Thus, baseball’s eventual dis-placement of cricket demonstrates the increasing influence of America inJapan, which, in turn, promoted the spread of baseball in Japan. AsDunning (2002) suggests, ‘these processes [Americanisation]… depend fun-damentally on the shifting balance of world power’ (p. 231).

In Japan, baseball represented its desire of emulating the Americansystems by replicating the American game’s rules and equipment. As intro-duced, the Waseda University baseball team’s visits to America were exemp-lary. During the trips, Japanese students not only competed against Americanteams but also made extensive notes about how the game was played-includ-ing auxiliary features such as cheerleading (Kelly 2004). Such tours to Americaincreased the Japanese demand for purchasing US-made equipment and uni-forms (Kiku 2006). These expenditures were a point of honour for Japaneseplayers, whose motivations were augmented by the pride they took inplaying American ‘high collar’ baseball (Kusaka 2006). Besides, the organiz-ational history of intercollegiate baseball in Japan replicated the organiz-ational history of American intercollegiate sports (Guttmann and Thompson2001). The Keio and Waseda teams, which were formed in 1903, quicklybecame the centre of a league that comprised six of Tokyo’s most prestigiousuniversities and eventually became Japan’s athletic equivalent of the US IvyLeague (Guttmann 1994). Particularly, the matches between Keio andWaseda attracted the national and media attentions: an article at that timecalled their game the ‘best spectacle’, which also drew about 20,000 specta-tors (Shinbun syuusei Meiji Hensenshi Hensankai 1940).

Meanwhile, American baseball players and their international tours directlycontributed to the game’s popularity in Japan and its colonies. Perhaps themost famous occasion took place in 1934, when a visiting All-American

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team that included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and other stars attracted tens ofthousands of spectators in Japan. The talent and magnetism of these athletesgreatly enhanced the image of the USA as the world’s most advanced andmodernized country. During their visits, Japanese were impressed by theirshowmanship and pride as well as the best performance by Sawamura Eiji,a Japanese legendary pitcher (Tamura 2004). One episode is that despitethe heavy rain during the morning, American players prepared for thegame, and, after the rain ceased, Ruth eventually played under the Japanesetraditional umbrella and Gehrig wore boots, which impressed and thrilled theJapanese spectators (Tamura 2004). Similar occasions were convened in otherparts of Asia as well, where visits by Major League Baseball (MLB) players gen-erated enormous interest beginning in the early twentieth century when theHerb Hunter All-Americans (a team of major leaguers) made several tours toJapan and China. In Korea, baseball got a particularly important boost in1922 when the Hunter team made a brief appearance in Seoul: the baseballstadium that opened in Seoul in 1925 was only one by-product of this visit(Reaves 2002).

Achievement in baseball also functioned as the measure of success in EastAsia. National pride and confidence increased in the wake of competitionsagainst American baseball teams and victories on American baseball fields.A primary example was the rivalry between Japan’s Ichiko Club (establishedin 1886) and the Yokohama Athletic Club, which consisted of Americans.Ichiko, at one time the most famous team in Japan, was the baseball clubof Daiichi High School; it captured wide public interest and attained nationalhero status in 1896 by virtue of winning an international match against Yoko-hama (Roden 1980). Five previous years of overtures by Ichiko for a match hadbeen rejected or even ignored by the American team – refusals that wereinterpreted as racial humiliation. One of the Ichiko team’s student-athletes bit-terly observed that:

The foreigners in Yokohama have established an athletic field in their centralpart into which no Japanese may enter…When we attempt to challengethem, they refuse, saying, ‘Baseball is our national game,’ or ‘Our bodies aretwice the size of yours’. (Guttmann 1994, p. 76)

When a game was finally arranged, on 23 May 1896, Ichiko claimed the victorywith handling the Yokohama Athletic Club an embarrassing defeat, 29–4(Roden 1980, p. 524). A second rematch, on 27 June, drew nearly 10,000 Japa-nese spectators (Guttmann 1994).

When the Japanese student-athletes delivered surprising and humiliatingdefeats to the team of Americans playing in Japan, the attitudes of thelosing team as well as the American-influenced ways of reporting theevents changed. Before the first game started, Japanese players still feltsenses of cynical smiles from their opponents: when they missed fly balls

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during the training sessions, an American player even mocked such a play bystating ‘are they players?’ (Kouryoushi 1930, p. 802).3 As the series progressed,however, the American opponents ‘were increasingly willing to shake handsand utter half-hearted cheers’ to the Japanese players (Roden 1980, p. 530).For their part, the Ichiko players were excited by ‘the possibility that [their]excellence in America’s “national game”, demonstrated in competition withAmerican teams, would compel Westerners to reconsider fictitious stereo-types about the unmanly Japanese’ (Roden 1980, p. 529). Clearly, baseballin Japan has long been an instrument by which to acquire recognition fromthe West and to rectify, enhance, and enshrine the country’s nationalimage. After the games, one representative of the school complimented Japa-nese players by stating that today’s victory was not only for their school, butalso for all the Japanese (Kouryoushi 1930, p. 803). The case of baseball in theearly modernizing process also reaffirms that ‘national mythmaking throughsport is common as a means of generating new habits amongst the citizenry’(Miller et al. 2001, p. 3).

A similar but different mechanism would be witnessed after WWII. As theregion was integrated into American’s new postwar empire throughout theCold War period, it boosted national pride and confidence through victorieson American baseball fields. The widespread American military presence inEast Asia was critical to the revival of interest in baseball throughout theregion. In occupied Japan, according to Kelly, ‘baseball’s revival was encour-aged in 1947 by General Douglas MacArthur as a means of fostering an Amer-ican spirit’ (2011a, p. 254).

For Taiwan, the greatest available triumphs were in activities that, like base-ball, had been defined and approved by the USA (Morris 2004, 2006, Yu 2007).The 16 Little League World Series won by Taiwanese teams between 1969 and1995 were all played on US soil (in Williamsport, Pennsylvania). The resultingnational buzz that occurred almost annually in Taiwan assured the game’snational importance. The Taiwanese success of Little League Baseball (a legit-imate form of America’s national pastime) seemed indicative of the country’sown modernization, proof that Taiwan could compete on equal footing withthe industrialized West (Sundeen 2001). In fact, illustrations of the game itselfas well as portraits of the country’s Little League players are featured onTaiwan’s banknotes. In the 1970s, when Taiwan was ostracized from everyinternational body, such successes in international events enabled the KMT(Goumindang) government to hijack ‘baseball, transforming it into anational-building tool to offset these debacles on the political and diplomaticfronts’ (Yu 2007, p. 37).

In Korea, baseball’s popularity grew during the Cold War period underheavy US influence. The game’s swift postwar resurgence was directlyfuelled by US troops stationed there: American forces enabled baseball toflourish as a very popular high school, university, and professional game in

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the new country of South Korea (Kim 2008). In the late 1990s, the surgingpopularity of Park Chan-ho, the first Korean player in MLB, demonstrated aniterated mechanism. While South Korea underwent a national economiccrisis between 1997 and 2001, Park’s excellence as a starting pitcher for theL.A. Dodgers elevated him to the status of national hero who boosted nationalconfidence as well as a true winner who was succeeding in the world’s fore-most baseball league (Cho 2008). In the eyes of Korean baseball fans andKoreans in general, MLB remains ‘not only the venue in which the best base-ball players perform, but also the premier symbol (as an invention of andstand-in for America) of the advanced or developed’ (Cho 2012, p. 10). Also,the successes of the Korean national team in the 2006 and 2009 World Base-ball Classic (WBC) boosted both baseball popularity and national frenzyamong Korean baseball fans as well as the general population: the final tour-naments were held on US soil, and in 2006 the Korean team beat Team USA.Just as sport emerges as a global phenomenon when it stands for the nation,so the nation, as embodied in sovereign politics, ‘continues to be the criticalunit of international commerce’ (Miller et al. 2001, p. 8).

Since its introduction, baseball in East Asia signified the region’s perceptionof America as the field of dreams. Baseball was embraced as the embodimentof American modernity, and it survived and even prospered under the aus-pices of American hegemony. However, it must be noted that this hegemonywas neither unchallenged nor monolithic. Asian teams often subverted thehierarchies of baseball by beating America at its own national pastime,which invoked national frenzy. Exploration of baseball’s early interconnectionwith America helps in understanding the multifaceted nature of global sport,revealing the complex and even contradictory articulations among nationalidentity, regional rivalry, and global capital. Furthermore, such a phenomenonexplains the recent global sport complex which is ‘as much about commodi-fication and alienation as it is to do with a utopian internationalism’ while thePacific Rim emerges as the new frontier of capitalism (Miller et al. 2001, p. 4).

Japan as the colonial interlocutor

As Imperial Japan disseminated baseball in its colonies, it also adapted or‘japanized’ it. Baseball in its colonies had been differently developed underJapanese colonial rules. After WWII, the political situation of each countryenabled the nationalization of its baseball practices under American hege-mony. Japanese influences in various baseball practices illuminate Japan’smediating role in as well as a refracted process of constructing coloniality/modernity in East Asia.

Although American missionaries, educators, and merchants were theprimary teachers and models of this American game in the region, Japaneseplayers and promoters responded with levels of creativity that at times

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bordered on irreverence. In colonized Korea, Gillette’s efforts to introducebaseball were ‘followed by the long period of Japanese colonial rule’ (Kim2008, p. 373). In Taiwan, the game was introduced and popularized mostlyby Japanese soldiers and administrators.

Japanese baseball is known as yakyu or baseboru. In Japan, baseball prac-titioners were required to endure tough training, punishment, and self-sacri-fice and to embody the attitudes of ‘the indomitability and determination thataimed at victory at all costs’, traits that are collectively known as the ‘Ichikospirit’ (Kiku 2006, p. 39). For the Ichiko team, a simple game of baseball func-tioned as a righteous struggle to protect their national honour as well as torectify their country’s national image. This style embodies a samurai ‘fightingspirit’ that manifests not only on the ball field but also in management, sanc-tions, and punishments, and a pervasive rhetoric of self-sacrifice (Kelly 2007,p. 197). Japanized baseball, which was founded upon the concepts of teamspirit, caution, deep deference, and intense loyalty, is still called ‘samurai base-ball’; obviously, it is very different from the game as played in America(Whiting 2003). Tabita, a head coach at Waseda University, compared baseballto Bushido, as the way of the samurai in terms of the principles of moralconduct, whose central tenets are stoicism, frugality, and self-discipline(Whiting 2003).

At the same time, Japan utilized the game and its accompanying skills todemonstrate its superiority over its colonized. Because modern sports wereconsidered symbolic of modernity, they were deemed fit only for the ‘superiorrace’ – a label applied particularly within baseball. As long as Japan had theexclusive right and power to control how its imperial subjects played thegame (as well as whether they played it at all), its own high-calibre skills func-tioned as a way to raise the country above other Asian nations and to separateits people from the other ‘yellow races’. Not only did Imperial Japan strictlycontrol baseball within its colonies, it ‘would tutor its client colonial subjectsin a programme of “modernism”’ (Kim 2008, p. 373).

In colonial Korea and Taiwan, playing baseball was at first very limited andseverely controlled: the game existed only within the Japanese-run edu-cational systems or outside these systems only when Japanese people partici-pated. For example, after the Japanese colonial government’s BaseballRestriction Law banned all Korean baseball tournaments, Koreans couldonly play in games sponsored by the Japanese. In Taiwan between 1989and 1918, only the Japanese population played baseball (Lin and Lee 2007).Not until colonial rule shifted its focus to cultural assimilation in 1919 wasbaseball permitted to colonists, but even then the game was played only aspart of the physical education programmes in Japanese-controlled insti-tutions. As baseball’s popularity steadily increased, regular tournamentswere organized in colonial Korea through the 1920s (Lin and Lee 2007) andan annual tournament was established in Taiwan in 1929 (Sundeen 2001).

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In Taiwan, where the game was introduced in 1897, two years after coloni-zation began, baseball was intended to function as a colonial legacy; even so,it sank deep roots for the next 50 years (Lin and Lee 2007). For Imperial Japan,Taiwanese baseball was a means to an end: throughout the occupation, thecolonizers were moulding the character of the Taiwanese in order to makethem into loyal imperial subjects (Yu 2007). For the Taiwanese, participationin Japan’s ‘national game’, that is, baseball, allowed them to prove and livetheir acculturation into the colonial order (Morris 2004). The most famousbaseball team in colonial Taiwan, the Kano team, exemplified such assimila-tion. In 1931, when this high school team dominated Taiwanese baseball,its starting nine consisted of two Han Taiwanese, four Taiwanese aborigines,and three Japanese players (Lin and Lee 2007). This multiracial compositionsymbolized baseball’s contribution to a supposedly harmonious coexistencebetween colonizers and colonized, as well as between mainlanders and abor-igines. The Kano team’s representation of Taiwan in the Summer Koshien from1931 through 1936 actively demonstrated the country’s willing participationin Japanese national events organized by the imperial authority and its obe-dience to rules made by the Japanese government. On the Kano team in theKoshien, Kikuchi, a renowned journalist, wrote a column entitled Impressed bythe Tearful Cooperation among Three Ethnics (1931).4 In his column, he com-mented that he was impressed by the unitary goal among three ethnics, andthat all the Japanese spectators, including him, seemed to become fans of theteam in the final of the Koshien (1931). With this seeming compliance, theKano team affirmed the Japanese colonial myth of assimilation (doka)(Morris 2006, Kelly 2011c).

Baseball also functioned in colonial Korea as a convenient medium foramelioration and cultural conciliation. Modern sports, including baseball, inKorea ‘evolved within this framework of Japanese invasion, oppression, andcontrol’ (Ok 2007a, p. 159). Various ways of restricting and utilizing baseballin its colonies indicated that Imperial Japan utilized physical education andbaseball for maintaining its colonial rules and for controlling the colonizedin ways that could not be interpreted as paramilitary.

However, in both colonial Taiwan and Korea, baseball sometimes func-tioned to subvert colonial rule and even to crystallize anti-colonial sentiments.Sport associations among the colonized were ‘strongly associated with under-ground independence movements because sport was one of the only waysKoreans were permitted to congregate as a group’ (Cha 2009, p. 25). The colo-nized often used baseball as a way of negotiating and competing with theJapanese, much as the Japanese did in their games against Americanteams, and took advantage of these rare occasions to subvert colonial rules.After the first National Elementary School Tournament in 1929, the Taiwaneseteams’ upset victory over Japan created an explosion of pride throughout theisland (Yu 2007). As Lin and Lee observe, ‘beating them [the Japanese] at their

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own game’ demonstrated the actual superiority of subordinate peoples (Linand Lee 2007, p. 333). Baseball in Korea offered a similar, intriguing outletfor young Koreans opposed to Japanese military rule.

Japan’s influence continued to permeate baseball after Taiwan and Koreabecame independent. In the development of Korean baseball after WWII, itshigh school tournaments imitated systems of Japan’s Summer Koshien, bothof which were sponsored and organized by the major newspapercooperations. In 1982, many Korean-Japanese players (zainichi) who hadmainly played for the Japanese Professional Baseball League returned tothe Korean Professional Baseball League (KBO) as players and coaches. Atfirst, zainichi players and coaches brought advanced skills and techniquesand often dominated the competitions. For example, In-Chun Baek, whohad played in the Japanese league for almost 20 years, in 1982 becamethe first playing manager in Korea (for the MBC Dragons). In Taiwan, theTaiwanese remain aware of baseball’s American and Japanese roots, so thegame is ‘experienced as a reminder of the profound influence of Americanand Japanese culture’ (Morris 2004, pp. 176–177). Taiwan has also continuedto recruit Japanese players and coaches into its leagues. Moreover, incontrast to the Chinese Professional Baseball League, which was started in1990, the Taiwan Major League, inaugurated in 1997, clearly prefers the Japa-nese way.

Baseball in Taiwan and South Korea, however, has developed differentlyunder various political conditions: each country game also underwent natio-nalization of the game. In postwar Taiwan, baseball became an importantmeans to preserve Taiwanese identity against the KMT government’s ‘de-Tai-wanization’ policies. Little League Baseball’s successes in Williamsport turnedbaseball into a national obsession as Taiwan moved from the periphery ofChina to the margins of the world, a change that Liao calls the double margin-alization of Taiwan (Liao 1997). While baseball was becoming the nationalspectacle, the KMT government not only accepted the game but alsopraised the Little Leaguers as models of Chinese citizenship and exploitedthe game in general to promote nation-building. After the end of martiallaw in 1987, baseball became even more useful for the construction of Taiwa-nese national identity. Since 2001, under the leadership of presidents LinDenghui and Chen Shuibian, baseball has been heavily utilized to accelerateTaiwanization.

In South Korea, the inauguration of the KBO in 1982 was politically motiv-ated: then-President Chun Du-hwan and his military government establishedthe league ‘as a diversion and channel for political social unrest’ (Reaves 2002,p. 137). Despite this initial motivation, KBO became a national pastime inSouth Korea because its development corresponded to the country’s econ-omic growth and to the public’s desire for more leisure activities. As Koreannational teams achieved international success in the 2000 and 2008 Olympics

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and the 2006 and 2009 WBCs, baseball became the national spectacle. Whenthere is any match against Japan, it is easy to observe ‘the anti-Japanese senti-ments that were expressed around baseball (and remain salient 65 years later)’(Cho 2012, p. 4).

Longstanding historic rivalries between Japan, as the ex-colonizer, and theformerly colonized, represented by on-field competitions, have also becomemore intense since MLB teams began to recruit Asian players in the late1990s. Sport is the medium that ‘most intensively and most equallyengages Japan and its East Asia rivals (and perhaps expanding to a largernotion of Asia) in highly public international competition’ (Kelly 2013,p. 1244). While local mass media produce very nationalist representations oftheir native players in MLB (Cho 2008), Taiwanese and Korean fans attemptto exaggerate their triumphs over Japan via offsite competitions amongtheir countrymen who play in MLB (Chen 2012). As Cha notes, ‘Japan’s imper-ial past in Asia causes most former colonies to view every contest with Japanas a historical grudge match’ (2009, p. 25). At the same time, Asian fansattempt to challenge the aura of the USA and MLB as the field of dreamsthrough competitions with and victories over the USA in internationalevents such as the WBC. Fans throughout Asia still desire the USA, andMLB, as the ultimate model of the advanced, but at the same time they con-tinue to attempt to de-colonize from Japan and even the USA. Such examplesdemonstrate that the effects of the spread of sport from the empires or imper-ial forces to the former colonial subjects have been double-edged. In otherwords, ‘most former colonial peoples now regularly beat the English/British“at their own games”, in the process boosting their own self-confidenceand sense of nationhood’ (Dunning 2002, p. 232).

The game has been popular since its introduction almost 125 years agoand is still popular in the countries that experienced heavy American influenceand military presence during the Cold War period. However, the game sur-vived and prospered largely because of Japan’s active, mediating roles – tothe point that it became an integral part of local cultures (Reaves 2002). Atthe same time, baseball enabled the colonized to demonstrate their excel-lence and to celebrate victories over their colonizers, both individually andcollectively. Meanwhile, ‘there is a reduction in the contrasts within societies,as well as within individuals’, which ‘leads to a reduction in differences ofsocial power and conduct – a process of functional democratizationunfolds’ to a certain degree (Maguire 1999, pp. 42–43). Baseball’s refractednature in East Asia, furthermore, makes the theory of figurational studies insports more complex because the phases of colonization and functionaldemocratization happened not only between the West (America) and thenon-West (Japan), but also among non-West entities (Japan versus itsformer colonies) and even in the complicated assemblages among non-West participants and the West (Asian players via MLB).

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Double binding as East Asian coloniality/modernity

Exploring the trajectory of baseball in East Asia reveals that the game hasnever been simply a leisure activity there but instead began as a moderninvention, installed as a colonial policy by Japan. The ways of playing baseballin each East Asian country reflect the way that the region was simultaneouslymodernized and colonized. Heuristically, I suggest the term ‘double binding’to encompass both Japanese colonialism and postcolonial consciousness inits colonies, in which the USA and Japan functioned as a pair of colonialforces and as the objects of de-colonization. As a concluding remark, I theorizethe implications of double binding as a specific stream of East Asian colonial-ity/modernity. Here, double binding can be utilized as either a temporal or ananalytic framework. While double binding directs us to the actual historicaltimeframe, as an analytic concept, it ‘does help to explicate the course ofboth colonization and modernization in East Asia’ (Lee and Cho 2012, p. 602).

First of all, doubling binding was constructed as a consequence of theregional convergence of the American and Japanese empires. Essentially,double binding refers to the double colonization directly imposed by bothJapan and the USA. Conceptually, however, it is not necessarily limited to ter-ritorial and political dimensions (e.g. Japan’s occupation of Korea, Taiwan, andparts of China and Southeast Asia, and the US occupation of Japan after WWII).Instead, the term evokes the protracted co-dependency of colonizer and colo-nized during Japan’s domination of East Asia. Double binding as a form of EastAsian coloniality/modernity continued to operate via the mechanism of Amer-ican hegemony under the Cold War regime. However, these conditions, whichinclude the expected cycles of domination and resistance, also imply theimpossibility of utter domination due to inconsistencies on the part of thecolonizer and persistent subversions by the colonized. In addition, the com-petitive and intricate dynamics between the USA and Japan complicatedthe colonial governing matrix; whenever possible, the colonized exploitedthis competition to the point of being able to claim victories, althoughthese were often symbolic. To put it succinctly, double binding indicatesboth the condition of double colonization and the possibility of overcomingit: the latter can be called de-colonization. Beyond the cases of physical com-petitions such as baseball games, de-colonization also includes de-colonialthinking that problematizes positivist modernization, historicism, and Euro-centrism as well as thinking that goes beyond global capitalism.

Secondly, double binding calls for the de-imperial process in the region inorder to make de-colonizing efforts both authentic and effective. The explora-tion of baseball’s trajectory in East Asia reminds us of the possibility of emer-ging sub-imperial desires. In the triad of ‘Asia-Japan-the West’ that thebaseball trajectory encapsulates, ‘Japan’ is replaceable within the various con-ditions, and any country or discourse can emerge in a sub-imperialist position.

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Formerly colonized nations such as Taiwan and South Korea express sub-imperial desires by entering the global hierarchy: for example, the discourseof ‘Southward-Advancing’ in Taiwan in 1994 revealed the desire of ‘the emer-ging Third World “subimperialism”’ against its target colony (Southeast Asia)(Chen 2000, p. 15). Similarly, the discourse on ‘Northeast Asia’ in SouthKorea in the 2000s revealed the country’s desire for global recognition of itsdevelopment as well as its mediating capacity within the Asia-Pacificregion. In this regard, Chen suggests that ‘deimperialization is a more encom-passing category and a powerful’ as well as ‘theoretically a much wider move-ment than decolonization’ (2010, pp. 4 and 6). Thus, double binding remindsus of the continuing necessity of de-imperialization along with the process ofde-colonization. Double binding indicates the urgent need for regional de-colonial/de-imperial thinking that comprises ‘a relentless analytic effort tounderstand, in order to overcome, the logic of coloniality underneath therhetoric of modernity’ (Mignolo, 2011, p. 10).

As an expression of refracted modernity, thirdly, double binding indicatesmultiple, various, and indigenous ramifications of modern life in the coloniesthat reflected ‘their concurrent relations with Japanese and Euroamericanmodernities’ (Kikchi 2007a, p. 8). Even as Japan simultaneously colonizedand modernized societies in East Asia, it introduced and enforced Westernmodernity as matters of policy. Thus the development of Asian modernities(which can also be called Asian modern life) depended not only upon conver-gence between East and West but also upon intervention by a regional inter-mediary. This model differs from the classic theory of colonized subjectivity, inwhich the contemporary black English stand between two great culturalassemblages (Gilroy 1993). Instead, striving to be modern Asians in EastAsia requires specific forms of triple consciousness: national, regional, andglobal. In this vein, double binding helps to illuminate the specificity of EastAsian modernities as an articulation of national, regional, and global sensibil-ities in ways that are simultaneous yet uneven. In other words, East Asian colo-niality/modernity is always and already bound by the national as well as theregional and the global (Cho 2011).

Ultimately, articulating the specificity of East Asian modernities enables usto explore further ‘options’ and ‘alternatives’ and ‘to make clear, by thinkingand doing, that the fortunes of the world can no longer be thought of asone global future in which only one option is available’ (Mignolo 2011, pp.xxxvii and 24). As Dirlik suggests, indigenous conceptions of knowledgehelps us to envision ‘not an alternative modernity, but an alternative to mod-ernity’ (2014, p. 42). By conceptualizing double binding, this study explicatesboth the development of a specific stream of East Asian coloniality/modernityand the possibilities of de-colonial and de-imperial processes in the region. Itis still true that any effort of conceptualizing East Asia can easily fall into thetrap of expressing (sub-)imperial desires. Tokyo’s bid for the 2016 Summer

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Olympic Games reflects both Japan’s desires of ‘re-assert[ing] its status as oneof the world’s truly global cities’ and ‘a national anxiety about the political andeconomic challenge of its rival East Asian superpower, China’ (Kelly 2011b,pp. 2262 and 2264). As Miller et al. suggest, however, I also hope that ‘thepoint of analysing such developments is both to understand and changethem’ (2001, p. 5).

Finally, I hope that this study contributes to building rigorous connectionsbetween the sociology of sport and Asian studies. Sport has been a largelyignored or less-researched field within Asian studies. This study shows thatby considering long-term developments of sport and its theoretical andempirical constructs, the sociology of sport not only expands its areas andtopics, but also contributes significantly to the understanding of the region.In turn, Asian studies can expand its reach and depth by including sport asa serious form of life and culture within which the production of knowledgeand identity occurs. As Kelly advocates, modern sports are ‘among the mostpowerful and ubiquitous national memory makers of modern societies’(2011c, p. 482). Thus, it is both necessary and crucial to study East Asiathrough the history of sport and to attempt to refine its modernity in waysthat are both thoughtful and specific.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank for all the responses from the participants of the events,as well as from two reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.

Notes

1. To explain the modernization of sports, similarly, Elias used the term ‘sportisation’‘to refer to a process in the course of which the rules of sports came more and moreto be written down, nationally (subsequently internationally) standardized, moreexplicit, more precise, oriented around an ethos of “fair play”’ (Dunning, 2002,p. 220).

2. For its contributions, the Waseda teams were regarded as ‘revolutionaries of thescientific baseball in Japan’ (Tobita, 1925, p. 60). For obtaining materials in Japa-nese, I received the assistance of Tooyama Aya, and the librarians of the BaseballMuseum in Tokyo.

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3. After the games, a foreigner with white mustaches told Japanese players that hewas very impressed by the game because Japanese players really learned hisnational game well, baseball (Kouryoushi, 1930, p. 802).

4. An original article was retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/Nagoya.Japan.Taiwan.Friendship. Accessed on 1 May 2015.

Notes on Contributor

Dr Younghan Cho is an associate professor in Korean Studies at Hankuk Uni-versity of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include mediaand cultural studies, global sports and nationalism, and East Asian popculture and modernity, and cultural economy in Korean and Asian contexts.Dr Cho has co-edited several special issues, incuding ‘Colonial Modernityand Beyond: East Asian Contexts’ in Cultural Studies, ‘American Pop culture’in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and ‘Glocalization of Sports in Asia’ in Sociologyof Sport Journal. He edited two books, entitled Football in Asia: History, Cultureand Business, and Modern Sports in Asia (Routledge, 2014).

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