Yakyū-dō: Japanese Baseball as a Microcosm of National Character

By Mike Griffen

“Baseball is more than a just a game. It has eternal value. Through it, one learns the beautiful and noble spirit of Japan.”1

- Suishi Tobita, Besuboru Magajin, vol. 2, 1960.

When Hideki Matsui announced his decision to sign with the New York Yankees in

2003 he knew it would not be a popular one with the notoriously ruthless Japanese sports

media. Matsui, affectionately nicknamed “Godzilla” for his prowess and power at the plate,

knew he would have to publicly explain his choice. He was the cornerstone of by far the

most popular team in Japan, the Yomiuri Giants, in a position analogous to the Yankee

Captaincy. At the press conference, Matsui humbly apologized for his decision and 1 Ikei, Masaru. “Tobita Suishu senshu,” Besuboru Magajin Sha., vol. 2. pp. 30-31, 1960.

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expressed his shame his selfishness stating simply, “I have to do this. Even if people think

I’m a traitor.” He had built up enough equity with his fans that they quickly forgave him.

Matsui was the perfect ambassador for Japanese baseball. He was a shining

representation of both the Japanese personality and the way they played baseball. He was

an unabashedly nice guy, polite and deferential; he trained extremely hard and sacrificed

for the sake of his team. He exemplified the Japanese yakyū-dō (“way of baseball”), a code

which whose tenets were derived from the core principles bushidō (“way of the warrior.”)

Players like Hideki and the various other aspects of Japanese baseball, provide a window

into the Japanese as a people. There, baseball is its own entity, overtly different from the

American game and uniquely adapted to fit the Japanese culture and life. And although the

country and the game hav seen a bit of shift since the 1980s, the philosophies encompassed

in yakyū-dō remain prevalent.

The Genesis and Assimilation of Besuborū

On May 23, 1896, Tokyo’s First Higher School, Japan’s foremost preparatory school,

crushed a team of amateur American ballplayers in Yokohama by the score of 29-4. For the

players of Ichikō, as the school was called, and the Japanese people as a whole, the

domination of Americans in their own game carried a significance that extended beyond

baseball.

The match was five years in the making. The Yokohama Athletic Club had

continually rejected the school’s semi-annual challenges, ostensibly due to ill-feelings

stemming an incident of violence involving an American reverend and members of the First

Higher’s judo club during a match with a foreign run missionary school in 1890. Below the

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surface, the foreigners in Yokohama viewed an engagement on the ballfield with a Japanese

team as an admission of cultural equality, a concession they were loath to make at the time.

The foreign squad had gone so far as to public declare the Ichikō players as culturally and

physically unfit to engage in athletic competition with foreigners. Their perception of

superiority over the Japanese ballplayers quickly imploded after the first game and

disintegrated entirely after each of the nine rematches. In the twelve games against foreign

competition from 1897 to 1904, Ichikō outscored their opponents by a total of 259 runs to

only 68 for the American teams.

For the Japanese, Ichikō’s dominance over the Americans in their own national

pastime during this period not only helped popularize the game in Japan but led to the

recognition of baseball as an effective tool for the rectification of national image and pride.

The players were hailed as national heroes. They viewed themselves as combatants in a

struggle for national dignity. Their victories were merely a service to the nation.

***

The genesis of baseball in Japan is relatively straightforward and generally accepted,

unlike that of its American progenitor. In the infancy of the Meiji Era, the new government

implemented a state-sanctioned modernization program recruited nearly three-thousand

foreign experts and teachers, known as oyatoi, as part of the country’s reluctant “opening”

up to the West. One of these oyatoi was Horace E. Wilson, a twenty-eight-year-old American

who started teaching at Tokyo’s Daigaku Nankō – which would later combine with other

schools to become the famous First Higher School – in 1872. There, aside from his

classroom duties, Wilson taught military style calisthenics he had learned during his time

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in the Union army. During recess and after-hours, he introduced a new game called

besuboru, played with a ball, bat, and bases. This new exotic spectacle was immediately

popular with the students, who enjoyed both watching and participating.

Prior to the “opening” to the West, the concept of exercise for exercise’s sake was an

alien concept in Japan. But within a decade, Wilson’s game, which the Japanese had begun

calling yakyū (field ball), had spread throughout the nation. Its proliferation was aided by

the reciprocal relationship between baseball and the government’s institution of physical

education in public schools, for which the game was partly responsible.

By the 1880s, formal teams began to form at the high school and college levels after

the formal solidification of a two-tier higher educational system consisting of three-year

prep schools and four-year colleges. This development gave the school system enough

stability to serve as an incubator for the Japanese game and allowed ground for the

application of Japanese philosophical, spiritual, and cultural ideology to the sport.

Doryoku to Gattsu: Effort and Guts

In feudal Japan, the land was dominated by the samurai, a warrior-class of nobles,

loosely analogous to knights. Nearly every aspect of the life of a samurai was guided by

bushidō or “the way of the warrior.” The code of bushidō is built on the concepts of extreme

self-discipline, endless training, unquestioning obedience, Zen spirituality, group harmony,

self-denial, selflessness, loyalty, and most importantly, honor. Despite the virtual extinction

of the samurai class around the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, the tenets of bushidō have

found a foothold, or in some cases been implanted, in a multiple sectors of Japanese culture.

***

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Yakyū-dō or “the way of baseball,” is a term commonly used among baseball

aficionados in Japan. What the term amounts to – as might be inferred – is bushidō on the

ballfield. In this way, baseball is one of the most conspicuous remnants of samurai ideology.

Yakyū-dō involves, among other things, the spiritualization of training, obsession with

form, mutual sacrifice for the sake of the team, complete deference to managers, coaches,

and those in positions of authority, and conservative highly thought out play.

One of the driving forces behind the development and spread of the yakyū-dō

philosophy was legendary manager Suishu Tobita, known in Japan as “The God of Baseball.”

Tobita had played for Waseda University during his college years in the early part of the

20th century and was an average player by all accounts. Nine years after he played his last

game for Waseda, the school offered him the managerial position. He accepted. Influenced

by his former Waseda coach’s philosophy that baseball could be a modern replacement for

war, Tobita approached the game with the mindset and intensity of a drill instructor and

treated the players as soldiers. His men were expected to act any soldier would. Nearly all

aspects of their lives were controlled by the coaching staff, down to minute details such as

how and when to brush one’s teeth. Players, in his view, should love their team in much the

same way that they loved their country. That meant complete and total obedience to

authority, in this case, the manager and his staff.

He deliberately incorporated tenets of bushido into his philosophy, putting

particular emphasis on the necessity of mental and spiritual fortitude and incorporated Zen

practices to create “morally correct athletes.” The result was exceptionally intense

practices which were designed not so much for the honing of skills or even physical

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conditioning but for the hardening honing of the spirit and the conditioning of the mind.

The training eventually became known as death training for its intensity and brutality. He

would make his players field ground balls, “until they were half dead, motionless, and froth

was coming out of their mouths.”

As Tobita himself described his methods:

“The purpose of training is not health but the forging of the soul and a stronger soul is only born from strong practice.

To hit like a shooting star, to catch a ball beyond one’s capabilities…such beautiful plays are not the result of technique but good deeds. For all these are made possible by a strong spiritual power.

Student baseball must be the baseball of self-discipline, or trying to attain the truth, just as in Zen Buddhism. It must be much more than a hobby. In many cases it must be a baseball of pain and a baseball practice of savage treatment. If the players do not try so hard as to vomit blood in practice, they cannot hope to win games. Only with the constant cultivation of tears, sweat, and bleeding can a player secure his position as such. One must suffer to be good.”2

To most Americans, Tobita’s method may seem shocking, even barbaric, but despite

the undeniable cruelty, Waseda won, a lot. His success elicited a turn away from the more

lax, “rational” American approached which some favored at the time, to Tobita’s seishin

yakyū (“spiritual baseball) as it sometimes called. Variations of his methods remain the

predominant approach to baseball in Japan, as evidenced by a 2004 survey conducted by

Fuji-Sankei, which found that over 90% of all professional managers and players in Japan

adhered to elements of “spiritual baseball.”

2 Robert K. Fitts. Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major

Leaguer. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

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Take, for example, the story of Choji Murata, a highly successful pitcher in the NPB

in the 70’s and 80’s. Murata believed fervently in the idea of constant hard work. He

pitched over a hundred pitches a day, throwing all as hard as he could, and like many other

Japanese, he always tried to “pitch through the pain.” But in 1982, his elbow began causing

him incessant pain. He tried to pitch through it despite barely being able to lift it, and was

eventually put on the disabled list. Even so, he kept trying to throw, hoping to will the pain

away. His effort and dedication was undeniable, but so was the fact that none of his

attempts at treatment were working. He wasn’t getting better.

Over the course of his injure, Murata had tried acupuncture, electrical shock,

massage, even naked meditation under a freezing cold waterfall at the guidance of a Zen

priest. None of it worked. The priest told him that he must heal his arm himself, no one

could do it for him. Murata was desperate and finally turned to medicine. An American

doctor named Frank Jobe had repaired a pitcher named Tommy John’s torn UCL with a

revolutionary procedure and was willing to help Murata. Murata acquiesced at the behest

of his wife and Jobe repaired his torn UCL using a ligament from his wrist. Choji returned to

play the next season, where he went 17-5 and won Comeback Player of the Year.

In the years following his surgery, the revelation that modern medical techniques

could be applied to baseball and other athletic injuries led many players with similar

injuries to seek surgery right away. Murata criticized the increase in younger players who

he thought did not suffer long enough to build character from the experience before getting

surgery. They lacked the self-discipline and self-control needed to resist the urge to fix the

pain without first learning and drawing strength from the experience.

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Ballplayers or Sararīman?: Corporate Control Over Baseball

A common sentiment about Japanese ballplayers when compared to their American

counterparts is that, “Americans play baseball, Japanese work it.” The saying may be a bit of

an oversimplification but it is a reasonable assessment given the businesslike aura

surrounding the Japanese game.

In the years following the American Occupation, Japan began to emerge as an

economic powerhouse and by the 1980s, the country had become the second largest

economic power on the planet. Forming the foundation of Japanese corporate capitalist

success during this “economic miracle” was the sararīman or salaryman. A salaryman is a

particular breed of white-collar worker – usually male – in the large bureaucracy of a

corporate firm or governmental institution whose position is based on ability rather than

seniority. The lives of these workers are almost entirely defined by their jobs. Many are

hired directly out of school and are expected to stay with the company until retirement to

display their loyalty. They are known for working long hours –as many as eighty per week

in some cases – and expected to sacrifice their home life for the sake of the company, even

if it means forgoing efforts to start a family. Absolute subservience to their superiors is

expected. In many ways, a salaryman’s job is a lifelong commitment; their life is not entirely

their own.

The same workplace warrior mentality and structure extends to the baseball field.

Players are often treated like sararīman. Managers exert dictatorial control over them, just

as a manager would in a corporate setting. Players are worked hard, often operating under

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the same “work ‘til you drop” mindset and, until recently, most players were expected to

remain with their teams for the duration of their careers.

***

The incorporation of businesslike operations into Japanese baseball can be traced to

the pre-World War II era, when the game was beginning to evolve into the quasi-religious

spectacle it would one day become. For decades following the game’s introduction the

game was almost exclusively played on an amateur scale. Nearly every level of the school

system, from Middle school to High school to collegiate, enjoyed immense popularity.

It did not take long for private businesses to recognize the marketing opportunity

that school baseball could provide. Mizuno, Japanese first and largest sporting goods

producer, was the first to organize and sponsor a large-scale middle school tournament in

1913. Two years later, the Osaka Asahi Shimbun, a major newspaper, created the first fully-

national tournament, drastically increasing their distribution, readership, and brand

recognition numbers across the country. The Osaka Mainichi Shimbun quickly organized a

rival tournament – also held at Kōshien Stadium, only in the spring – to counter Asahi’s. In

the years that followed, corporate-sponsored tournaments popped up like dandelions, but

those sponsored by Asahi and Mainichi have evolved into nearly sacred events akin to

national holidays.

Industrial semipro teams also enjoyed immense success during this period. These

clubs were sponsored by successful companies, primarily in the steel and railroad sectors.

The semi-pro teams became the destination for many former college and high school stars.

The players continued playing baseball almost full-time, with the assurance of a stable,

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comfortable job after their playing days were over. Predictably, industrial teams were

(micro)managed in the same way that any other company employee would be. In this case,

the label “Work ball,” was literal.

***

The industrial semi-pro teams may have occupied the murky grey area between

amateur and employee, but there was little opposition to their continued existence. After

all, they were working for the company. They would join the workforce in due time. They

were working-athletes. The idea of an entirely professional team, let alone a professional

league, worried a number of fans who that play-for-pay would corrupt the integrity of the

game and diminish the purity some associated with amateurism.

In 1935, Matsutaro Shiroki, owner Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, created the first

professional team in Japan. He named it Dai Nippon Tokyo Yaku Kurabu (The Great Japan

Tokyo Baseball Club). Within a year he was able to persuade five other corporations, all

either railways or newspapers, to join his new league. The Japanese Baseball League was

an instant hit, even managing to emerge relatively unscathed after The War ended. The

success of the league reflected the nation’s perseverance and rapid recovery during those

years.

In 1950, the league underwent a transformation. The name was changed from the

Japanese Baseball League to the Nippon Professional Baseball League (NPB) to reflect

national pride and solidarity in the wake of US Occupation - Nippon being the Japanese

name for their country. A team was established in Hiroshima in 1950, just five years after

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the city was obliterated by the atomic bomb, further reinforced the resiliency of the

Japanese people.

The addition of Hiroshima and six other teams helped solidify the NPB as a

legitimate professional enterprise. Unsurprisingly, the corporate capitalist cultural

explosion that gripped the nation during the years of the Japanese “economic miracle”

became the driving influence behind the way teams and the league itself was and still is

run.

Each team is owned and operated by major corporations, rather than a single owner

as is common in America. For most Major League owners, the team is their foremost

concern, their primary job. Most who own business ventures turn the organization over to

a trusted, experience professional while they focus on the team. Japanese teams are often

considered corporate subsidies, mere tax write-off for their parent companies. They are

run as if they were simply another branch of the company’s overall business operation, just

part of the bigger picture. Owners who have no real affection for the game acquire

organizations for purely promotional purposes. Teams are usually named after their parent

companies, rather than their cities, as is customary in American profession sports. This can

result in some grating and unattractive names such as Nippon-Ham Fighter, SoftBank

Hawks, or DeNA Bay Stars.

That this unabashedly direct method of promotion influences company business is

unquestionable. Whether the effect is always desirable or not is an entirely different

question. The visibility of the companies which own baseball teams and the level to which a

team’s identity is intertwined with that of the company can lead to adverse effects in sales.

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Statistical studies indicate that, when one team defeats another team – in a playoff series

for example– business in the areas where there is a heavy concentration of fans of the

opposing team plummets temporarily. This principle is evidence tenfold when the

opposing team is the Yomiuri Giants.

The Giants popularity in Japan has been compared to that of the New York Yankees

in America and Manchester United in the English Premier League combined. An estimated

60% of the country identifies as Giants fans. To be a Giants fan is, to many Japanese, like

being a member of an exclusive national club, one that anyone can join.

The effect of the Giant’s status as Japan’s “national team” has helped their parent

corporation, the Yomiuri Group, become the largest media conglomerate in Japan. The

company’s flagship subsidiary, the Yomiuri Shimbun, become the largest circulating

newspaper in the world, with over ten million copies purchased daily. The team’s

relationship with the newspaper allows ownership to create a clean, regal image for the

Giants, which further contributes the people’s love affair with the team.

Organized Cheering – The Oendan

Japanese baseball fans are of a different breed than their U.S. counterparts. The

basic aspects of fandom – pride, loyalty, investment of time and emotion, etc. – are present

in Japanese fans, only amplified substantially. An American baseball fan attending or

watching a Nippon Baseball League game is likely to see more similarities with a Premier

or Champions League soccer match than a Major League Baseball game.

The first and most obvious distinction when watching a game of besoboru in Japan is

the noise. Unlike at U.S. stadiums, where the noise level fluctuates according to what’s

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happening on the field, Japanese games feature a near-static roar though the duration of

the action. Thousands of men and women with noise-makers, drums, blow-horns, cow

bells, megaphones, and, of course, their vocal chords, drown out nearly all other sound.

They shout encouragement at their favorite players while refraining from insulting the

opposition. Between innings cheerleaders, often accompanied by at least one mascot of

some sort or another, entertain the crown with a performance that is sure to confuse

anyone unfamiliar with modern Japanese culture. Team songs and personalized player

hitting chants are sung over and over beginning prior to the first pitch, continuing

throughout the game and often into the streets after fan pour out of the stadium after

particularly special wins. For example, the chorus team song of the Hanshin Tigers goes:

The wind blows from Mount Rokko

The sun beats high in the sky;

The passion of youth is beautiful,

Oh, glorious Hanshin Tigers.

Ohh . . . ohh . . . ohh . . .

Hanshin Tigers,

Fure . . . fure . . . fure . . .

Hooray . . . hooray . . . hooray.

From “The Hanshin Tigers Song” lyrics by Sonosuke Sato3

At the core of all the ruckus is the oendan, a highly structured and boisterous

cheering section composed mostly of white-collar workers unwinding from a long work

day. Most fans, although highly engaged in the action on the field, tend to watch a game

quietly, “behaving with proverbial Japanese decorum, eschewing the sort of loud and

3 Robert Whiting. You Gotta Have Wa. New York, NY: Random House Publishers, 1988. 111.

13

vulgar conduct common in many U.S. ballparks…Yet, put him in an [oendan]… and he

quickly sheds his traditional restraint…he becomes a veritable wildman, yelling and

screaming for three solid hours.”4

The majority of oendan members are corporate day-workers, seeking a respite from

their grueling jobs. Anyone can join. They are even free to form their own group if they

choose. However, for those with career aspirations who work for a corporation that owns a

NPB club, membership in an oendan is often a requisite for advancement within the

company.

Given these circumstances, it is no surprise to reason that the same sort of order

and group unity that defines Japanese would extend to group cheering. At present, the

number of oendans in Japanese professional baseball is in excess of 230 – the largest of

which has a membership of over 55 thousand fans. While some oendan are less organized

than others, the majority utilize a hierarchical system. At top is the cheerleader, who

usually stands in front of his group with a megaphone and conducts and coordinates the

cheering. Some assign seating and even require members to arrive at the stadium hours

before the game to “practice” their cheers. The oendan hierarchy, excluding those

controlled by corporations, is merit-based. Whoever makes the most noise can improve

their seating, even become cheerleader, regardless of background, age, or gender

(hypothetically, at least.)

A Sluggish Transition into a New Era

4 Robert Whiting. You Gotta Have Wa, New York, NY: Vintage Books, (1989), 113-14.

14

Ask an average oendan member about yakyū-dō and there’s a good chance they’ll be

familiar with it, they may even be a proponent of it, at least in theory. But it is becoming

more and more evident that the modern game and the way it is played is slowly but

inexorably changing. The doryoku to gattsu (blood and guts) mindset and method of

management has by no means, died off. However, it is being toned down due in part to

modern medical advance, Japan’s cultural shift starting in the mid-1980s, and most

importantly, the departure of Japanese players to the MLB.

At the beginning of the 1980s, a new generation of Japanese youth began to emerge.

They were dubbed the shinjin-rui or “New Breed.” They brazenly embraced Western

concepts of individualism while openly rejecting long accepted Japanese cultural values

such as self-sacrifice, subservience to superiors, and unflinching loyalty. The New Breed

infiltrated baseball in Japan, just as they did every other aspect of society. A number of

these players began to stand up to accepted tradition. They questioned the logic (and

sanity) of extreme workouts in which players injured themselves for the sake of building

mental fortitude. They scoffed at blind loyalty, deference to superiors, and advocated

individualism both on and off the field. The banner-men for this new type of ballplayer

were a brash, overweight infielder with a golden bat.

***

Hiromitsu Ochiai is considered by some to be the best Japanese ballplayer of the

1980s. In his nineteen year career, the third baseman would belt over 500 home runs, hit

over .300 ten times and set the single season record for batting average and win three

Triple Crowns (all of which he publically predicted prior the season.) He did all of this

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while flatly refusing to take part in any of the team training, showing up late to spring

training, and delighted the media with his immodesty.

Ochiai baffled the Japanese. He was a purebred native of Japan, yet he was so-unlike

any other homegrown athlete they’d seen. He had a low threshold for self-denial and

believed in conserving energy for games rather than exhausting himself in pre-game

workouts. While his teammates labored on the hot field and took hundreds of swings

before the game, Ochiai sat on the sideline and relaxed. “I only need ten swings,” he would

tell his manager, and he was always right.

His self-confidence was always on display whenever the talked to the media. He

once caused a stir with his analysis of the Japanese game by telling a reporter:

“The history of Japanese baseball is the history of pitchers throwing until their arms fall off for the team. It’s crazy. Like dying for your country – doing a banzai yell . . . with your last breath. That mentality is why Japan lost the war . . . . Spirit, effort, those are words I absolutely cannot stand.”5

Despite Ochiai’s immense success and popularity with the younger generation, very

few players followed his example at the time. A few players, such as Suguru Egawa, the

volatile, outspoken pitching ace for the squeaky clean Giants, diverged from the traditional

mold. But things did not really start to change until a young flamethrower named Hideo

Nomo came along and changed the Japanese game forever.

Nomo was due a new contract from his team, the Kintetsu Buffaloes, following the

conclusion of the 1994 season. Nomo had always dreamed of playing the MLB. He was fed

up the intensity of Japanese baseball, which prioritized harmony and training over the

5 Robert Whiting. You Gotta Have Wa. New York, NY: Random House Publishers, 1988. 203-04

16

health and future of the players. After a heated contract dispute Nomo’s agent, Don

Nomura, exploited a loophole in the outdated Japanese Uniform Players Contract. To this

point, the situation for Japanese baseball players was much the same as that of the

sarariman. Players were expected to remain with the team that had drafted them for the

duration of their careers. Free agency was unheard of. The “voluntary retirement clause,”

as the loophole would be known, made it possible for players to become free-agents if they

declared their retirement. Kintetsu management, unaware of the situation and fed up with

the futility of the contract talks, challenged Nomo to do just that. Nomo enthusiastically did,

then signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Initially, the Japanese sports press were outraged by Nomo’s bait-and-switch. They

labelled him an “ingrate,” a “traitor,” even gaijin (Japanese for “outsider” or “foreigner.”)

But when the MLB season began the Japanese sports media began singing a different tune.

Nomo was extremely successful as a rookie. He won Rookie of the Year, made the All-Start

team, and finished fourth in Cy Young voting. Suddenly, Nomo was a source of Japanese

pride, a national hero. A scene which would become familiar in the years to come played

out around Nomo. The Japanese media fawned over him and throngs of journalist followed

him, documenting his every move. It appeared that he had open Pandora’s Box, but only a

crack.

The NPB reformed and rewrote the rules for player contracts, allowing certain

players to leave for the United States after a prescribed amount of years playing in Japan.

Teams who wish to talk to a player were to pay an exorbitant fee to the Japanese team

currently holding his rights. The massive sums of money that this “posting system”

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required MLB clubs to divulge for the possibility of signing a player has not stopped them

from signing Japanese stars.

Some of the biggest stars in Japanese baseball have made the leap. Ichiro Suzuki, one

of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball at any level, became the first position

players from Japan to go the Majors. He signed with the Seattle Mariners in 2001. In his

first season he would lead the Mariners to the best record in the history of professional

baseball (116-46) while leading the league in hits, batting average and stolen bases, making

the All-Star team, winning Rookie of the Year, a Gold Glove, and being named the league’s

Most Valuable Player. He set the single-season record for most hits in a season in 2004 and

is poised to pass the 3,000 hit mark in the Majors and Pete Rose for all-time combined hits

record this upcoming season.

Despite the enormous Major League success of Nomo, Ichiro and players like Hideki

Matsui, the rate at which are players leaving Japan has been more of a trickle than the

deluge that some expected. Since 1995, fifty-nine Japanese players have played in the

Majors, a rate of just 2.38 players per year. In 2015 the well appeared to temporarily dry up

when, for the first time since Nomo, no player made the jump. Granted, a number of

extenuating circumstances contributed to this conspicuous absence but it is indicative of

the fact that not all players have abandoned the old ways of loyalty, dedication, and yakyū-

dō.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Primary Documents

Japanese Sources

Ikei, Masaru, “The Ichiro Effect,” New York Times, July 9, 2001.

Marantz, Ken “Clash of young stars takes center stage Matsui, Ichiro whip up frenzy for Series,” Daily Yomiuri, October 19, 1996.

Marantz, Ken “Seibu’s Matsui caught MLB skipper’s eye,” Daily Yomiuri, November 17, 1998.

Nikeei Weekly editors, “Japanese baseball revived by record breaking slugger: Ichiro brings fans back to the game with hitting streak,” Nikkei Weekly, September 26, 1994.

Other Sources

Curry, Jack “Stepfather says Irabu is the Son of an American,” New York Times, July 15, 1997.

Eisenbath, Mike, “Assaults and batteries aside, Suzuki hitting early stride,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 15, 2001.

Engel, Mac and Ridder, Knight, “’The Japanese Elvis’ enjoys American stage; 1st position player from Japan in Majors relishes his ‘space,’” Washington Post, April 15, 2001.

Hickey, John, “To get hits or to get hits; Japan’s Ichiro Suzuki may find his style painful,” Hamilton Spectator, March 16, 2001.

Jacob, Mark, “Pro baseball going through a slump in Japan,” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 2006.

McKenna, Barrie, “Sun starting to rise on Japanes baseball, Big-league teams expect influx of talent to increase substantially very shortly,” Globe and Mail (Canada), July 14, 1999.

Peterson, Gary, “Experts bat .000 against Ichiro,” Contra Costa Times, June 20, 2001.

Weber, Rick, “The importance of being Ichiro,” Scotland on Sunday, September 30, 2001.

Vancouver Providence editors, “Ichiro picks up the lingo,” Vancouver Providence, July 10, 2001.

Secondary Sources

Brown, Bill. “Waging Baseball, Playing War: Games of American Imperialism.” In Cultural Critique. vol. 1, no. 17. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, Winter 1991-1992.

Fitts, Robert K. Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

Fitts, Robert K. Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

Fitts, Robert K. Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Fitts, Robert K. Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri. Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

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