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Home , Baseball in Japan, Robert Whiting

Volume 5 | Issue 4 | Article ID 2398 | Apr 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Focus

Samurai vs. Baseball in Japan

Charles W. Hayford

Samurai Baseball vs. Baseball in Japan

Charles W. Hayford

Baseball fans, lovers of a good fight, and those who are curious about how we go about understanding Japan, will all welcome “Baseball andBesuboru In Japan and The U.S.” Studies( in Asia online), a group of essays growing out of a conference atMichigan State Pretty heavy stuff – as the cliché has it, University last year. Michael Lewis in his “life is a metaphor for baseball.” Peter C. Introduction does concede that baseball Bjarkman’s essay “American Baseball is a game but is “also a powerful Imperialism, Clashing National Cultures, economic force, a ladder for social and the Future of SamuraiBesuboru ” mobility, a vessel freighted with national quickly makes the case for larger symbols, and for many something of a significance. [2] Looking at baseball in sacred cultural preserve with practices Cuba, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan he (or is it rituals?) that delineate them from argues that American Major League us.” Lewis reports that there was great Baseball is trying to control and debate at the conference over “nature Americanize a lovely, global game and versus nurture, or cultural essentialism turn it into a cash cow. He quotes a Latin versus shared solutions to shared American charge that “El béisbol is the problems.” [1] Monroe Doctrine turned into a lineup card, a remembrance of past invasions.” Bjarkman concludes that the American game has been assimilated; besuboru and béisbol are different from “baseball.”

Is the difference between the original Yankee baseball and the game in other counties the difference between the real thing and a knock off or between the

1 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF narrowly conceived original and new character differs from American. In versions creatively adapted? Is baseball America, for instance, “excellence is franchised around the world likeequated with getting results no matter MacDonald’s? After all, “a Big Mac is a how unorthodox the form,” while in Japan Big Mac is a Big Mac,” so isn’t baseball “it is more important to conform to the just baseball? The dispute over baseball set way of doing things.” Other articles in in Japan vs. Japanese baseball involves the Code provide for rigorous training more than whether the bats are heavier, and self discipline; that “the player must balls smaller, and training morenot be materialistic” (a provision invoked strenuous. Do these differences represent especially by management at salary differences within a system or between negotiation time); that a player “must systems? Depends on who you ask. follow the rule of sameness”; must “recognize and respect the team pecking On one side is Robert Whiting. His books order”; and, finally, must strive for wa – are classics of sports writing and hugely “team harmony and unity”: influential. [3] His first book,The Chrysanthemum and the Bat (1977) The good team is like a beautiful begins by stating that Japanese baseball Japanese garden. Every tree, every rock, “appears to be the same game played in every blade of grass has its place. The the U.S. – but it isn’t”: smallest part ever so slightly out of place destroys the beauty of the whole.... When The Japanese view of life, stressing group each player’s ego detaches itself and identity, cooperation, hard work, respect joins twenty five others to become one for age, seniority and “face” hasgiant ego, something magical happens. permeated almost every aspect of the All the efforts and sacrifices the players sport. Americans who come to play in have made at last become worthwhile. Japan quickly realize that BaseballFor they are now a perfect functioning Samurai Style is different. (Forward) unit. (p. 67)

Whiting goes on to describe the game as Whiting’s eye and effective style have “outdoor kabuki” rather than an athletic insured that this way of framing the competition, for in a most un-American differences between American and way, the game can end in a tie. The Japanese ball has passed into media lore. chapter “Baseball Samurai Style,”[4] The 1994 documentary, “Baseball in illustrated with a photo of Japan” claims: posing with a samurai sword, derives a “set of strict unwritten rules that might Because of its slow pace, baseball fits the be called Samurai Code of Conduct for Japanese character perfectly. The Baseball Players” which “has roots in conservative play mirrors the Japanese Bushido, a warriors’ mode of behavior conservative and deliberate approach to dating from the 13th century.” (p. 37) life. Managers and coaches view baseball These rules show how Japanese national as a tool to teach loyalty and moral

2 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF discipline – the same type of loyalty and the nation in the early twentieth century discipline feudal Japanese lords expected – education, industry, middle class life, from their soldiers and subjects. This the government, and above all the samurai discipline requires endless hours national project. Since baseball was an of training, self-denial, and an emphasis American sport but Japan was not a on spirituality. So goes the Japanese colony, baseball in Japan was a way of approach to baseball. [5] declaring independence, defiance, and creativity. From early in the century, the But others frame matters differently. middle schools and colleges adopted a These include Yale anthropologist“fighting spirit” in athletics (recall that William Kelly. Kelly’s first book was on Teddy Roosevelt called for the abolition Tokugawa irrigation practices, so he of college football in the knows feudal Japan. Kelly criticizes those when violence had become the hallmark writers, Whiting among them, who go of the game). In the 1930s the newly back to unexamined ancient traditions formed professional leagues adopted that rather than look at specific responses in spirit, which styled itself “samurai.” The particular historical circumstances. [6] government, which stepped in to shape In his Yale class lecture Professional“ local social institutions, used sport to Baseball,” Kelly agrees that sometrain and manage its citizenry both professional baseball in Japan does fit the spiritually and physically; major business “samurai” stereotype: “not entirely, not corporations turned to college teams to convincingly, not uniquely, but enough to recruit loyal executives; large commercial feed the press mills and the front offices newspapers competed for readers by and the television analysts.” In fact, he telling more and more nationalistic sports says, this “spin” is part of the game. Our stories; transport companies bought job is “not to dismiss this commentary as professional teams. The Japanese public misguided (though much of it clearly is)” and media demanded “Japanese style” in but to ask who is putting these ideas sports to distinguish themselves from the about, who is believing them, and why foreigners and set models for self- they are appealing: “The myths are sacrificing workers and citizens. [7] essential to the reality....” Japanese baseball is “not a window onto aThis summary does not do justice to homogenous and unchanging national Kelly’s detailed argument, but should character, but is a fascinating site for show that he does not rely on “national seeing how these national debates and character.” He charges that “national concerns play out – just as in the United character” is misleading because it States.” “essentializes a population,” that is, explains its actions in terms of fixed Why did baseball in Japan develop this codes which govern everyone rather than “samurai” self-image? Baseball in Japan history or political choices; applies was shaped by the important elements of ethnocentric standards of judgment; and

3 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF homogenizes the varieties of everyday too simplistic, but he replied that he did lives. not claim that Japanese big leaguers wear top knots, carry swords, or commit seppuku: “samurai baseball” is just a metaphor. The metaphor may not be perfect, but “metaphor means resemblance, and so we must consider the ways in which it does fit.” The word “samurai” is used to highlight the “very real similarities and the grounding that the game has in budo or bugei, the martial arts of old, and its relationship to bushido with its lessons about dedication, self-perfection, submergence of ego and development of inner strength.” “Samurai baseball” does indeed reflect the Japanese national character since the lessons have been “passed down from generation to generation by fathers, teachers, coaches and, in adulthood, corporate bosses, right to the present day.” At the Michigan State conference, Whiting went on the counter-attack. [8] National character studies can be Whiting stated that he has lived in Japan abused, Whiting agrees, but denies since the 1970s, graduated from Sophia implying that Japanese behavior is University, speaks fluent Japanese, and is instinctive, unique or without internal immensely peeved that academics use contradictions. In the end, however, “to him as a straw man. He pitted his “forty suggest that there is nothing different years of watching baseball inJapan ” about the way that the average Japanese against Kelly’s scholarship: “I admire his and average American see the world... is effort to put together an academic history to deny reality and throw the baby out of Japanese baseball,” Whiting began, but with the bathwater.” Whiting charges “I must say that I find some of [Kelly’s] Kelly with believing that “there is nothing interpretations of the game inJapan different about the way that the average uninformed and believe that theyJapanese and the average American sees undermine Americans’ understanding of the world.” it.” To bolster his case, he inserts a few choice specimens of academic jargon. The Professor and the Journalist: Or, Wa’s Up, Doc? Some critics, Whiting continued, objected to the appellation “samurai baseball” as The clash here is not merely personal but

4 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF between generations and professional Whiting masterfully framed what he saw cultures, ways of telling a story, and at the ball park in terms which the standards of evidence. American public could understand at a time, before the boom of the 1980s, when Someone once remarked that each new Japan was still exotic. James Clavell’s generation stands on the shoulders and Shogun: A Novel of Japan used some of sometimes on the faces of previous ones. the same images of feudal Japan, though If so, Whiting must feel footprints all over without Whiting’s knowledge and his face. In spite of his many awards – in experience of Japan. [10] 1990, for instance, the translation of The Chrysanthemum and the Bat was named Kelly’s professional socialization was one of the one hundred most important different. When he started his baseball Japanese books of all time – he has not fieldwork, he found himself working in been given his props by Americanwhat he called the “direct shadow” of his academics. In return, he showspredecessor, Whiting. Japanese baseball impatience and lack of sympathy with people pegged him according to how academic modes. To establish his bona close they thought his views were to fides, he explains that after he first went Whiting’s. By that time, most readers to Japan in 1962 as a military intelligence both outside the academy and inside it analyst and began his life long addiction had read and often been persuaded by to besuboru, he majored in Japanese Whiting’s portraits. What Kelly indelicately called his “Whiting problem” politics at in and was then how to be appreciative of the read the works of Ruth Benedict, Hugh older man’s “much longer experience Patrick, and Edwin O. Reischauer with the game, respectful of the evocative (though he does not mention that power of his prose, yet staunchly critical American scholars were then rejecting of his explanatory logic...” [11] this style of scholarship). “These were all distinguished by pages of intelligent but The two men explain the way they work dense, dry exposition and a total lack of and illustrate the clash between passion.” When he then tried to write academic and popular modes. The two about the Liberal Democratic Party and modes differ in question setting, in such, there was zero interest. It was only standards of evidence and argument, in when he started writing that there was a form, and in target audience. Whiting “magical home run hitter” who honed his takes the difference personally, while skills with a samurai sword, or that Kelly is philosophical though not entirely “there were star pitchers who would reconciled. Kelly describes how local pitch three or four days in a row without sports reporters were generous and concern for the obvious potential damage helpful in the beginning of his fieldwork, to the arm, or that began and the two sides “recognized in the freezing cold of mid-winter, that uncomfortable affinities.” But the people started paying attention.” [9] journalists and the professor emphasized

5 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF different parts of the story. When the unique – essentialism on the slopes! True, manager of the team was fired, for he may only have been trying to keep instance, the journalists moved “from the American skis out of the Japanese details of the incident to the motivation of market, but the choice of arguments is the actors and to the consequences for important and shows that Japanese are future actions,” while the anthropologist often involved in self-essentialization. was “more inclined to move from the same details to exploring the premises, Nor does “different” need to mean the process of decision-making, the “opposite” or “incompatible.” On the one alternative courses of action available, hand, Americans like to say “we’re are all the forms of disengagement,” that is, the same when we’ve got our skins off.” “working against the grain of the daily But what if that really means is that routine.” [12] Americans think everyone is “just like us”? The Disney historical films, for Whiting’s ambition is to let the American instance, proclaim multi-cultural themes public know what it was like to be there; but when we get back to 12th century he takes explanations of the actors more China or 16th century New England, it or less at face value. Kelly wants his turns out that Mulan and Pocohantas are colleagues and students to understand actually modern American teenagers in the deep structure and relevance of what costume. Perhaps to claim in the face of happened, which can’t always be done in obvious differences that we’re all alike layman’s language, and to relate his really means we’re afraid of difference. observations to the systematic debate in the field, which is structured by theory. The opposite mistake is to portray others as unique and beyond explanation: “not What’s the Difference? like us.” In his lecture “Zen Aesthetes Decide for yourself who comes out on and ‘Economic Animals: The Perils of top. But the deeper challenge remains: National Character” Kelly lays into the how do we account for difference?idea that Japan is America’s “radical Difference is everywhere: they say no two cultural opposite.” The “proper response snowflakes are alike, and if you’veto the claim that the Japanese are wondered how they know – did somebody radically different from you and me is not actually look at them? – now a University that the Japanese are just like you and of California physicist has a website me, but rather that, in important ways, explaining why, Is it True That No Two the Japanese are not like each other.” Snowflakes Are Alike? To say “samurai baseball” implies that we “Different” is not the same as “unique.” A have to appeal to unique Japaneseness to Japanese official in the 1990s wanted to explain the differences but do not have to restrict the importation of American skis characterize American baseball in a on the grounds that Japanese snow was similar way.

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The Anthropologist and the Sword “samurai” group ethic or “samurai” individualism, submission to authority or “Samurai” is now an all purpose synonym rebellion against it, innovation or for “intense” – the Sunday New York traditionalism. Times has a column on fashionable drinks called “Samurai Sipper.” Jim Jarmusch’s Whiting’s The Chrysanthemum and the 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Bat, of course, plays off the title of Ruth incorporates references to samurai, Benedict's wartime classic,The bushido, and French movies in a way that Chrysanthemum and the Sword floats above mere historical accuracy. Yet (Houghton Mifflin 1945), but does not many Japanese – ball players, executives, use its insights. Benedict’s school of the Japanese Army in World War II, and anthropology rejected nineteenth century even “kamikaze” pilots – also point to “scientific racism” as a way to explain samurai ethics as an all purposehuman difference, and saw cultures as explanation for Japanese behavior and the weaving of universal human threads call themselves followers of bushido. into distinctive national patterns: “We fear irreconcilable differences when the Karl Friday debunks the idea oftrouble is only between Tweedledum and explaining modern conduct by reference Tweedledee.” (p. 13) Although she looks to historical samurai in “Bushido or Bull? to Japanese history herself for A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the explanations, she remarks somewhat Japanese Warrior Tradition. “Hanging the tartly that “bushido” is a “publicist’s label of ‘bushido’ on either the ideology inspiration” which “became a slogan of of the Imperial Army or the warrior ethic the nationalists and militarists” in the of medieval Japan,” he says, “involves 1930s (p. 175), that is, in Kelly’s view, some fairly overt historian’s sleight-of- just when “samurai baseball” became set hand.” Much of the modern version of in concrete. bushido was “at odds with the apparent behavioral norms of the actual warrior Anthropologists and historians do not tradition.” Even the term “bushido” is the deny that some Japanese sincerely invention of a twentieth centuryembrace these myths. Ted Bestor did an Japanese, Nitobe Inazo (1862-1933), who ethnographic history of another Japanese wrote in English. Ironically, Whiting, institution, the great Tokyo fish market at without mentioning his role in theTsukiji (and no, he does not call it “the invention of the bushido tradition,chrysanthemum and the swordfish”!), includes in his history of the game which puts myths of Japanese national Nitobe’s 1905 charge that baseball was a identity in commercial and even edible “pickpocket’s sport” in which players form. He puts it nicely that “often what is tried to swindle their opponents and steal most important about the past is the bases. [13] In fact, these samuraipresent-day perception of it.” [14] So traditions are contradictory and could be Kelly does not hold that stripping away equally well used to explain eitherthe “myths” like layers of an onion will

7 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF reveal the inner truth, only that we should look upon these myths as themselves needing explanation, not simple acceptance or rejection.

Full Circle: Sushi Baseball?

Japan is no longer exotic when sushi is served in ballparks (at least on the West Coast) and Japanese ballplayers are no longer rare. The Baseball Preview issue of Sports Illustrated (March 26, 2007) has a cover story on the Boston Red Sox pitcher who was acquired this year from Japan: “Why Daisuke Matsuzaka is Worthy (And What America Will Learn From Him).” Tom Verducci’s article on the inside mentions a number of the practices once associated with “samurai baseball”: Matsuzaka trains hard and has doryoku or “unflagging effort,” but most impressive of all, last year he threw at least 130 pitches in more games than all pitchers in North American majorDaisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox leagues combined. This combination Pitcher makes Matsuzaka a potential instrument The conformity shoe is now on the other of change, but “it’s his throwing regimen, foot, but still it’s hard for a sports writer rather than his place of birth, that makes to avoid the Japanese touch: him the ultimate foreigner to major “Matsuzaka’s pitching motion is an league baseball” (p. 60). One American elegant haiku, beauty captured in three coach quoted by Verducci says that the parts separated by two pauses ....” philosophy of Japanese pitchers and Americans, Verducci goes on, want to coaches is “if you’re a pitcher, you need pitch like Roger Clemens: “The compact to throw,” and calls for Americans to ‘tall and fall’ is technically sound, a Sousa follow suit: “We’re training our pitchers march with no wasted elements. to throw less. And nobody wants to try Matsuzaka’s free-flowing, drop-and-drive anything different.” delivery is improvisational, like live jazz. Matsuzaka is coloring outside the lines...” (p. 62)

Now will somebody please explain why

8 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF we call the October classic the “World” the 2005 paperback to The Samurai Way Series? I would like to know, because my of Baseball). team, the Chicago Cubs, haven’t won one of them in more than a century, and next [4] The film clip Samurai“ Baseball“ year is going be our year. presents Japanese baseball as a different game in about two minutes. The PBS Frontline program “American Game, Charles Hayford is a Visiting Scholar, Japanese Rules,” (PBS Video, 1990) has Department of History,Northwestern more talking heads. “Mr. Baseball” University. (1990) stars Tom Selleck as an aging hitter who goes to Japan and runs into He wrote this article forJapan Focus. problems undreamed of inLost in Posted on Apr. 4, 2007. Translation (see Alan Chalk Guide to Japanese Films at theUniversity of Illinois Asian Education Media Service See also Robert Whiting, The Samurai site). Beat Takeshi’s Boiling Point (1990) Way of Baseball. shows a very Japanese but very unsamurai-like little league team that Notes runs up against .

[1] Baseball has long been fodder for [5] Quoted on William Kelly’s website international history: Richard C.(below). Crepeau, “Pearl Harbor: A Failure of [6] Kelly’s paper for theEast Lansing Baseball?” The Journal of Popular Culture conference is not included in the online 15.4 (1982): 67-74; Donald Roden, “Baseball and the Quest for National conference volume but the website for his Dignity in Meiji Japan,”The American Yale course, “Japan: The Anthropology of Historical Review 85.3 (1980). an Alternate Modernity (2002)” and his home page, William Kelly, make some of [2] For a fuller study, see his Diamonds his essays available on line. around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball (Westport, CT: [7] William Kelly, "Caught in the Spin Greenwood Press, 2005). Cycle: An Anthropological Observer at the Sites of Japanese Professional [3] The Chrysanthemum and the Bat: Baseball," in Susan O. Long, ed., Moving Baseball Samurai Style (New York: Dodd, Targets: Ethnographies of Self and Mead, 1977); You Gotta Have Wa: When Community in Japan.(Ithaca, 2000); Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball William Kelly, "Blood and Guts in Diamond (Macmillan 1989); The Meaning Japanese Professional Baseball," in Sepp of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and Linhard and Sabine Fruhstuck, ed., The the Transformation of Our National Culture of Japan as Seen through its Pastime (Warner Books, 2004; retitled for Leisure (Albany: State University of New

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York Press, 1998): 95-111; William Kelly, [10] See Henry Smith,Learning from "Is Baseball a Global Sport?America's Shogun: Japanese History and Western 'National Pastime' as a Global Sport," Fantasy (Santa Barbara: Program in Global Networks 7.2 (2007): 15 pp. Asian Studies, 1980). (forthcoming; kindly supplied by the author). [11] William Kelly, “Caught in the Spin Cycle,” 144-145. [8] Whiting’s talk, The Samurai Way of Baseball and the National Character [12] Kelly, “Caught In the Spin Cycle, p. Debate, was also published with revisions 141-143. at Japan Focus (September 29, 2006), with an introduction by Jeff Kingston, [13] You Gotta Have Wa, p. 35. who teaches contemporary Japanese politics at , Tokyo. [14] Theodore C. Bestor, Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World [9] Whiting, “Samurai Way of Baseball,” (Berkeley: University of California Press, Japan Focus, n. 35. 2004): 16.

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