More than a sport – baseball culture in Japan

Through the baseball culture in Japan, baseball means more than a sport to me.

To an avid baseball fan like myself this time of the year ranks up there with Christmas morning.

What is that I smell?

Peanuts? Hotdogs? Is it $9 beers?

I can’t seem to put my finger on it — oh, it’s baseball season in full force.

The World Baseball Classic and now Major League Baseball’s season opening.

That’s what it is.

This season, perhaps more than ever, I’m pumped.

It’s not really because of a particular player or team. Rather, it’s because there’s a palpable buzz amongst the global baseball community that’s seemingly born from enigmatic Japanese culture and has since spread worldwide.

After all, there’s a lot to be excited about when you’re the country that produced Shohei Ohtani.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “baseball is kind of hard to watch, and it’s just so slow, and…” . And you’re not wrong.

I played for seventeen years. I get it.

I’m not going to stand here and gaslight you. But I do want to get into how the baseball culture in Japan has gotten it right.

In Japan, baseball can be an entertaining, exhilarating, and dare I say culturally-significant environment. 

Let’s kick things off with the World Baseball Classic, perhaps best be summarized as the World Cup of baseball.

The 2023 World Baseball Classic

The most recent iteration of the World Baseball Classic was held just last month, and saw athletes from all across the globe gather in a twenty team tournament to determine which country would reign supreme.

And this year’s tournament, by no exaggeration, was the most electric to date. After a thrilling couple weeks of games, the fans — diehards and casuals alike — were treated to the ultimate storybook ending.

With the game on the line Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout to secure Team Japan’s 3-2 win over the USA, and hoist the country’s third World Baseball Classic title.  

Overall, international viewership and merchandise sales were off-the-chart, and much of it was due to the growing globalization of the game’s aforementioned generational superstar: Shohei Ohtani.

However, Japan’s relationship with their prodigal son and the sport as a whole cannot go overlooked. For context as to how deeply cultural it is, 42.4% of Japanese households tuned in to the championship game, despite it being played at 8am on a Wednesday local time. In comparison, this past Super Bowl was viewed by 40% of US households.

Japan is a deeply passionate country. That’s half the reason they even won the World Baseball Classic.

Following victories over the likes of Italy and South Korea at the Tokyo Dome, they had to travel to Miami, Florida to take on an American squad whose roster was quite frankly bigger and stronger in almost every regard.

Come to think of it though, isn’t that the beauty of baseball?

You don’t always need to be the biggest and strongest in order to win; you just have to do things purposefully, and to be frank that’s something Japan does very well.

Kodawari and baseball culture in Japan

こだわり, or kodawari, is the relentless pursuit of perfection in Japanese culture. To a great extent, this is embedded in the baseball culture in Japan as well.

It’s quite clear anytime you visit the country, and it’s through this belief system that the Japanese athletes are able to separate themselves from their Western counterparts.

Understandably, attention to detail and fundamentals are put at the forefront to achieve a unified goal, superseding brutism and the subsequent individualism that often follows the American style of play. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the American style of play, but there certainly isn’t anything right with it either.

Of course, the newly-implemented Major League Baseball (MLB) rule changes will build incremental interest in the sport, and have already improved the pace-of-play, but will the purported passion result if the quality of game continues neglected? 

Baseball, as it’s perceived in America, misses a certain tenacity. To me, the game in its current state fully embodies the ‘pastime’ aspect of “America’s Pastime.”

From Japan to the Dominican Republic, the sport is so much more than a pastime. America’s woes therefore feel more foundational in what aspects of baseball are glorified during the developmental process.

The States place a lot of focus solely on the commodification of game, alienating itself from the collective connection emulated from international fanbases.

Collectivism is a pillar across Japanese culture including the baseball culture in Japan. We are taught from a very young age to put the betterment of our community above our own self-interest.

I bring this up because one of the most prolific examples of uplifting community actually occurs every year across all of the Japanese prefectures. 

And wouldn’t you know it, it’s a baseball tournament.

The real baseball classic

Each summer Japan hosts a nationwide high school baseball tournament simply called “Summer Kōshien.” Forty-nine of the best schools in the country battle it out until a winner is crowned.

This athletic spectacle routinely draws millions of viewers. It is the largest amateur sporting event in Japan. 

The reason Japan rallies so much around this amateur event, and even more so behind professional events, is because of this element of community.

The tournament has hosted the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro Suzuki, and Hideki Matsui long before they were ever household names. It continues to give kids an opportunity to make a name for themselves nationally.

This further incentivizes people to rally around who could be the next Ichiro or Ohtani, and follow them as they progress through their professional career.

Granted, the NCAA does host a national tournament every year for baseball, and sure many current sluggers have passed through, but it’s just not high school sports.

There’s something about the passion of adolescence mixed with the geographic uniqueness of secondary schools that breeds collectivism.

All it takes is a single: “wow, this kid’s putting our small town on the map,” for an entire community to unite.

Baseball and community

Do I think that MLB needs to co-sponsor an event like this to fully revive the sport? No, but I do believe that investing more in community would be a great first step for American sports. 

Living in the Japanese American diaspora has been exhausting at times given these cultural differences in how community is perceived. Our values revolve a lot around the greater good — whatever that may be.

We’ve long prioritized the well-being of our neighbors, and our future generations. While baseball culture in Japan may not be the perfect metaphor for all of this, it does reflect our ability that for even the briefest of moments, we can find commonality.

And in today’s North American landscape, maybe that’s all we need. 

So after all of this, I’m not asking you to become a fan of baseball, or even sports in general. But, please become a fan of something.

It’s in our everyday enclaves that we experience the underlying cultural elements that make us who we are.

For me, it has and always will be Japanese baseball.

For you it could be American baseball, and that’s okay too.