Volume 5 | Issue 4 | Article ID 2398 | Apr 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Samurai Baseball 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 Sadaharu Oh 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 United States 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.