The other parts of this piece (as well as my previous articles) will soon be available here.

Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy and a fleet of ships under his command arrived in Edo Bay in February 1852 ending centuries of Japanese isolationism.[1] Since the beginning of the Tokugawa government in 1600, Japan remained cloistered from international trade, with the small exception of Dutch traders in Deshima. Despite internal discourse, the arrival of Perry’s expedition ended a quarter-millennium of national solitude. The Japanese ultimately opened the gates to study the military technology in Perry’s ships, but weapons and steamships were not the only American export they embraced. American missionaries situated on the far eastern Pacific island brought the American pastime of baseball with them. The game, still in its adolescence in the United States, first came to Japan in 1863 and was formally promoted there within a decade.[2] As tensions between Japan and the United States rose, so did the competition between the two sides on the diamond; baseball could not be separated from the other American imports of militarism and social Darwinism. Baseball became one of the factors that catalyzed an escalation of tensions to a boiling point: the bloody Pacific theater of World War II. Ultimately, the United States failed to properly use baseball as a tool for diplomacy and Americanization; the “American pastime” perpetuated military expansion, cultural difference, and racial hierarchy between Japan and United States.

The Japanese did not accept the American interpretation of baseball as diplomacy, and instead used the game as a tool to further promote a unique Japanese national identity. Initially, missionaries saw the game as a means to expand the American way through Christianity. As one YMCA leader claimed: “[A] baseball mitt, if used well, may remain a potent factor in meeting young men and boys for Jesus Christ.”[3] Beyond the confines of Christianity, the United States utilized baseball unashamedly to spread diplomacy, as it had done with the narrative of the American dream.[4] To this day, many Japanese are surprised to discover that Americans consider baseball to be the country’s national sport.[5] Such a notion suggests that Japanese recognize baseball as their own. In its early years within Japan, people acknowledged the game as an American import, over time individuals began playing outside the watch of western missionaries; Japanese baseball took on a culture of its own. Differences in player mentality, equipment, and linguistics highlight the two countries’ varied perceptions of baseball.

Baseball’s core mentalities of patience and strategy meshed well with the samurai tradition. This combination furthered Japanese nationalism, and additionally separated the game from its original American diplomatic purpose. The Japanese took interest in the slower paced game of baseball, instead of classically English games such as soccer and cricket. The American game rather than requiring pure speed and athleticism, called for values of order, harmony, perseverance and self-restraint, all of which mirror Japanese civic values.[6] Since baseball seemed to embody such qualities, the game did not seem new. Rather it embodied a physical, non-violent representation of Japanese culture that had existed for centuries. When the military machine of Japan began to build an empire in Taiwanese or Korean colonies, one of the tools used to “Japanify” colonial subjects was baseball. Baseball provided a vehicle for Japanese children, athletes, and spectators alike to continually interact with traditional military-focused values. Subsequently, the adoption of baseball soon became a means of revamping Japanese nationalistic identity, rather than reinforcing American diplomacy.

The linguistic change of the term “baseball” signaled a shift toward Japanese ownership of the sport and de-Americanization. In its infancy, baseball players and fans within Japan referred to the game as bēsubōru. In 1896 Ichikō students defeated Americans in the first instance of Japanese ballplayers prevailing over Americans, and Japan increasingly adopted baseball as its own.[7] Doing away from its transliterated birth name of bēsubōru, Chūma Kanoe, a former Ichikō second basemen, rebranded the sport as yakyū, translating literally to “ball play in the field”.[8] In this name change, Japan no longer remained subject to the rules and culture of American baseball. Chūma in 1896 published a rule book for yakyū, the same year the American baseball star and equipment entrepreneur Albert Spalding published an updated version of his Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide. In the Ichikō infielder’s edition, there are several rule changes to traditional baseball that align the game with Japanese values; for example, Chūma did away with challenging the umpire, as this signaled disrespect for authority.[9] With a simple name change, Japan claimed yakyū as its own, symbolizing a failure of the American cultural pastime to instill an American mentality.

The change in baseball’s name is paralleled by simultaneous developments in baseball equipment. Spalding’s failures in the economic sector in Japan mirrored the shortcomings of Wilsonian democracy in exporting the American way. Spalding ambitiously sought to expand his brand beyond the confines of the United States. He organized a world baseball tour in order to promote sales for his company’s baseball equipment. While the tour never reached Japan for logistical reasons, Spalding continued to supply Hiroshi Hiroaka, one of the godfathers of Japanese baseball, with free merchandise. In sending the equipment, the entrepreneur sought to both build his business as well as advance American values of masculinity and democracy, which he believed baseball embodied.[10] Spalding’s view followed Wilsonian democracy 20 years before its conceptualization: trade as a force to spread American liberty. Addressing the Salesmanship Congress in 1916, President Wilson declared “[Y]ou are Americans and are meant to carry liberty and justice and the principles of humanity wherever you go, go out and sell goods that will make the world more comfortable and more happy, and convert them to the principles of America.”[11] President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the United States share her ideals and become a great power in the world; trade, in his mind, would accomplish both.[12] Even before Wilson articulated this vision, Spalding held similar views. Despite his best efforts, the businessman began to lose equipment sales as bēsubōru became yakyū. Upon a 1908 Spalding-sponsored player visit to Japan, it became apparent that Mizuno, not Spalding, would reign as the country’s sporting equipment of choice.[13] To Japanese athletes, an American product deserved no place in an explicitly Japanese game, and thus they abandoned Spalding, as the rifts between the countries continued to widen. The deep divide in equipment preference symbolized the failure of Wilsonian democracy to prevent conflict through trade; once again baseball could not successfully spread American ideals.

Japanese rejection of American baseball rules and equipment illustrated the nations’ growing mutual contempt for one another. One might expect the sport to act as a tool of friendship, in which politics subside, as the two nations play alongside one another as a symbol of camaraderie. But whenever American and Japanese players competed, teams always remained completely racially homogeneous. In this sense, Americans and Japanese played against one another, not with one another; such an arrangement prevented cultural exchange and exaggerated racial differences. The baseball diamond became a place to make political statements, not avoid them. Deeply ingrained racism prohibited baseball from becoming an effective means of American diplomacy as evidenced in ballplayers and newspapers of the time.

The other parts of this piece (as well as my previous articles) will soon be available here.

[1] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. "Matthew C. Perry." Encyclopedia Britannica. June 16, 2011. Accessed March 2, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-C-Perry.

[2] Robert Elias, The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad. (New York: The New Press, 2010). Pg 28.

[3] Ibid, 64.

[4] Joseph A Reaves, "Silk Gowns and Gold Gloves." In Baseball without Borders, edited by George Gmelch, 43-64. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

[5] "Traditional Japanese Sports." Japan National Tourism Organization | Japan In-depth | Exotic Experience. Accessed March 02, 2017. http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/attractions/rest/sports.html.

[6] Robert Elias, The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad. New York: The New Press, 2010. Pg 29.

[7] Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri. Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Pg. 37.

[8] Ibid, 37.

[9] Ibid, 37.

[10] Ibid, 28.

[11] Daniel Immerwahr. "The Wilsonian Moment: Trade, Peace, and the Nation-State." Lecture, University Hall, Evanston, January 23, 2017.

[12] Woodrow Wilson, "The Ideals of America." Atlantic Monthly, (December 1902). Pg 8.

[13] Robert Elias, The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad. (New York: The New Press, 2010). Pg 63.