Viewing Notes for
“Baseball in Japan”
1994. Tony Howard, producer, director, and writer. Tim Westhoven, videographer. Produced by WBGU-TV at Bowling Green State University.
"Because of its slow pace,
baseball fits the Japanese character perfectly. The conservative play mirrors the
Japanese conservative and deliberate approach to life. Managers and coaches view baseball as a
tool to teach loyalty and moral discipline—the same type of loyalty and
discipline feudal Japanese lords expected from their soldiers and
subjects. This samurai discipline
requires endless hours of training, self-denial, and an emphasis on
spirituality. So goes the Japanese
approach to baseball."
In 1994, PBS
stations across the country broadcast an extended nine-segment series on the
history of baseball in the United States by celebrated documentary maker Ken
Burns. It was an extraordinarily
well-researched and written series, rich in footage and astute interviews. Many of those same station broadcast at
the same time this one-hour documentary on baseball in Japan. It is unfair, indeed impossible to
compare the two projects because of the vast differences in budget and
staffing. The juxtaposition,
however, does remind us of the appalling differences in our understandings and
representations of the same object of analysis—here, baseball—as it appears in
the United States and Japan.
Ken Burns detailed the transformations of this sport as it was situated
within metropolitan developments, ethnic and racial cleavages, and a changing
corporate landscape. Each of the
nine hours (from “First Inning” to “Ninth Inning”) was devoted to a decade in
its history. “Baseball in Japan”
looks briefly at its history—as backdrop—but announces its perspective in the
narrator’s opening lines, which I have quoted above. Their baseball is “a reflection of
Japanese societal values,” and the value it most clearly reflects is “samurai
discipline.” This is—and here they
appropriate Robert Whiting’s title without attribution—“baseball samurai
style.” Indeed, Robert Whiting is
the obvious, if unacknowledged, inspiration for the documentary, and you can
view as an audio-visual accompaniment to today’s reading, drawn from one of his
books. Recall, of course, Michael
Shapiro’s short essay on baseball that we read at the outset of the course.
The video is a distressing
excursion (back) into national character-land, and I confess to misgivings
about showing it in the class documentary series. It is not without any redeeming
features. Usefully for my purposes,
most of the documentary was filmed at Kôshien Stadium (which they rightly claim
as the “Mecca” of baseball in Japan).
This is the site of the annual high school baseball tournaments and the
home of the Hanshin Tigers professional club, with whom I have spent parts of
the last three seasons and about whom I am presently writing.
Most of the other footage
was shot at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (since
then, the Mazda group sold its financial interest in the team and it is now
simply the Hiroshima Carp, the only one of the twelve clubs under municipal
ownership). The interviewee most
relied on is American sports journalist Larry Fuhrman. The Tigers then-manager Katsuhiro
Nakamura also appears frequently, along with several players from Hanshin and
Hiroshima. These include Terry O’Malley, an outstanding player with Hanshin
from 1991-1994, and Marty Brown, who played for the Carp in 1992-1994. Japanese
players include Hanshin’s Mayumi and Nakada and the Carp’s Kobayakawa.
Despite the title, this is
a portrait of professional baseball
in Japan; the several forms of amateur play are not shown. It is structured by
moving through a series of topics, each of which it manages to present in
highly stereotypical terms.
The video notes a few minor
differences: the ball used in Japan is a few millimeters smaller than the American
ball, there is no infield grass, and there were at the time of filming time
limits on games (four hours in the Pacific League, four hours and fifteen
minutes in the Central League). Of
more significance, it feels, is that Japanese umpires have a wider strike zone
(which is in fact not the case).
Strategies
Here come the stereotypes.
Japanese, the video insists, play a much more conservative game; they are “not
as aggressive” as we are. The segment dwells on strong imperative to score
first run at all costs, as a psychological tool. Thus, managers are led to
order many bunts to advance a runner (Nakamura interviewed here).
Presented as “the strongest
part of the Japanese game,” but here too, pitchers invariably choose finesse
over power. They are conservative
and avoid challenging hitters (O’Malley is quoted here). The video relates this to the larger
society; in the US there is “lots of confrontation in society” while “Japanese
avoid confrontation”—therefore pitching styles differ.
Starters will go longer
into the game in Japan because pitching staffs are not as deep. This leads to an overuse and early
burnout of the best pitchers, which the video acknowledges as contradicting the
Japanese strength in long-term thinking and planning. It poses the question of how to resolve
this contradiction and finds the answer in “samurai obedience” Pitchers, like all players, obey the
managers without question, and willingly sacrifice their longevity for the good
of the team. ‘Warriors are never selfish
and cowardly,’ and they cite “Iron Man” Inao, who pitched six of the seven
games in defeating the Giants in the 1956 Japan Series, and “Golden Arm”
Kaneda.
Again the comparison is
between US umpires who are assertive and stand up to players, and Japanese
umpires, who are less assertive and don’t command the respect of players or
managers. They are occasionally
pummeled and must tolerate more physical contact. Their calls are “unpredictable” and
“irrational” and Marty Brown explains how a ball he and other players knew to
be a home run bounced back on to the field and was ruled a “ground-rule
triple.”
The video-makers go into
the stands at Kôshien to give us extended footage of fan club cheering
(including the balloon release in the middle of the “Lucky Seventh”) and
interviews with Hanshin fans and one club official (Vice-Head Ishida). [O’Malley also is used to comment on
their passion, while later a Japanese player complains that sometimes their
cheering is distracting.] The
video-makers seem puzzled that fans believe that their cheering actually helps
players to hit. They are impressed
with the “non-stop” and “awesome display of energy” by the rabid fans, many of
whom they claim “do not have that much knowledge of baseball.” They itemize three “functions” that they
believe the cheering serves:
(1)
collective cheering “satisfies the Japanese need for
harmony” and “allows them to be part of the group”
(2)
fans believe cheering inspires and energizes the team
(the video-makers clearly find this a dubious claim)
(3)
the cheering “acts as a tension release for the
normally stoic Japanese” (and they go on to suggest by interviews that this can
get out of hand)
You will find a different
perspective on these Hanshin Tiger fan clubs in my assigned article.
Other features of the ballpark
Brief mention is given the
female stadium announcers, the post-game “hero interviews” of the
player-of-the-game (who, they say, always modestly acknowledges the team
support), and the ballpark food (shots of yakitori, noodles, and other
“Oriental” delights)
About half way through, the
video shifts to a quick review of baseball history in Japan, beginning with
Horace Wilson and other US physical education teachers who introduced the sport
into Japanese schools in early Meiji (1870s). [Earlier in the video there had been a
brief segment on the two “greatest” players, Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo “Burning
Man” Nagashima. There is footage on
early school baseball and the university team contests with US teams. The message is the emphasis in school
baseball on the sport as a “moral platform to teach purity and discipline,”
based on martial arts. It segues
into professional baseball by noting several visits by US professional touring
groups (first, the Reach All-Stars in 1914 and most famously, the tour in 1934
that lionized Babe Ruth and also included Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Lefty O’
Doul, and others). This was the impetus for Shôriki’s sponsorship of a Yomiuri
Giants team (some rare footage) and the start of a professional league in
1936. Further brief segments of
post-World War II developments, but the video quickly shifts back to its
national character storyline.
Practice and the ethic of hard work
Japanese start baseball
young and because of “orientation to the group” devote themselves to it
exclusively all year round.
Individual style is frowned upon and “everyone has the same batting
style.” “This sameness has its
roots in the Bushidô code of the samurai.
This society doesn’t appreciate difference.” Players must give up everything.
This leads to a segment on
hard practices and the claim that “practice is everything.” Interestingly, after dwelling on the
“Marine Corps-style training,” the video then quotes Kobayakawa of the Carp,
and Mayumi and Nakada of the Tigers who all dispute the value of hard practices
and argue that they are counterproductive.
But the video rephrases the question into a comparison of US baseball as
“fun” and Japanese baseball as “work.”
Again, though, Nomura and Mayumi are shown commenting that neither likes
hard practices—they’re work—but loves the games. Fuhrman is used to mediate, claiming
that ‘well, they enjoy it, but not as much as American players’!
Foreign players
The segment on US players
emphasizes the shift from past use of over-the-hill MLB players to present use
of at-their-prime players. As
always, though, they are brought in for their power hitting, paid much higher
salaries than even the team’s Japanese stars, and weighted with huge
expectations.
Managers
Finally, the video takes up
the position of the Japanese manager, who is presented as “paternalistic to the
players,” having a closer relationship than the more business-like relationship
of US managers and their players.
The Japanese team is “more like an extended family”—the manager is often
a marriage go-between, and there is “close contact because they are all
together so much.” [This is now
changing “a little bit.”]
The final segment asks what
the prospects are for a true World Series.
“Are the Japanese ready for the global competition?” The Japanese, their interviewees
conclude, are smaller and have less power than both American and Cuban players
(although “perhaps” have better fundamentals). That would seem to imply that equal
world competition is a long way off.
Ian Littlewood pointed out
that stereotypes are erroneous images, but not in the sense of being totally
false or baseless. Rather, they are
highly selective versions of a reality, pernicious because they are so
exaggerated and oversimplified. As
with other aspects of Japanese life, we must confront the essentializing thrust
and judgmental (i.e., ethnocentric) tone of such a seductively simple rendering
of “baseball samurai style.” That
will be my task next week.