{"id":5368,"date":"2007-04-09T22:34:20","date_gmt":"2007-04-10T03:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/japan\/2007\/04\/samurai-baseball-off-base-or-safe-at-home\/"},"modified":"2007-04-09T22:34:20","modified_gmt":"2007-04-10T03:34:20","slug":"samurai-baseball-off-base-or-safe-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2007\/04\/samurai-baseball-off-base-or-safe-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Samurai Baseball: Off Base or Safe at Home?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[A version of this piece was published on Japan Focus<\/a> (April 4, 2007)] <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o><\/p>\n

<\/span>Baseball fans, lovers of a good fight, and those who are curious about how we go about understanding <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> will all welcome \u201cBaseball and Besuboru <\/em>In Japan and The U.S.\u201d (Studies in Asia<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a> online), a group of essays growing out of a conference at <\/st1>Michigan<\/st1> State<\/st1> University<\/st1> last year. Michael Lewis in his Introduction does concede that baseball is a game but is \u201calso a powerful economic force, a ladder for social mobility, a vessel freighted with national symbols, and for many something of a sacred cultural preserve with practices (or is it rituals?) that delineate them from us.\u201d Lewis reports that there was great debate at the conference over \u201cnature versus nurture, or cultural essentialism versus shared solutions to shared problems.\u201d [1]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

Pretty heavy stuff \u2013 as the clich\u00e9 has it, \u201clife is a metaphor for baseball.\u201d Peter C. Bjarkman\u2019s essay \u201cAmerican Baseball Imperialism, Clashing National Cultures, and the Future of Samurai Besuboru<\/em>\u201d quickly makes the case for larger significance. [2]<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Looking at baseball in Cuba<\/st1>, Japan<\/st1>, Korea<\/st1>, and <\/st1>Taiwan<\/st1> he argues that American Major League Baseball is trying to control and Americanize a lovely, global game and turn it into a cash cow. He quotes a Latin American charge that \u201cEl b\u00e9isbol is the Monroe Doctrine turned into a lineup card, a remembrance of past invasions.\u201d Bjarkman concludes that the American game has been assimilated; besuboru<\/em> and b\u00e9isbol are different from \u201cbaseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 narrowly conceived original and new versions creatively adapted? Is baseball franchised around the world like MacDonald\u2019s? After all, \u201ca Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac,\u201d so isn\u2019t baseball just baseball? The dispute over baseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> vs. Japanese baseball involves more than whether the bats are heavier, balls smaller, and training more strenuous. Do these differences represent differences within <\/em>a system or between <\/em>systems? Depends on who you ask.<\/p>\n

Samurai Baseball vs. Baseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1><\/h3>\n

On one side is Robert Whiting. His books are classics of sports writing and hugely influential. [3]<\/a><\/span><\/sup> His first book, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat<\/strong> (1977) begins by stating that Japanese baseball \u201cappears to be the same game played in the <\/st1>U.S.<\/st1> \u2013 but it isn\u2019t\u201d:<\/p>\n

The Japanese view of life, stressing group identity, cooperation, hard work, respect for age, seniority and \u201cface\u201d has permeated almost every aspect of the sport. Americans who come to play in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> quickly realize that Baseball Samurai Style is different. (Forward)<\/p>\n

Whiting goes on to describe the game as \u201coutdoor kabuki\u201d rather than an athletic competition, for in a most un-American way, the game can end in a tie. The chapter \u201cBaseball Samurai Style,\u201d illustrated with a photo of Sadharu Oh posing with a samurai sword, derives a \u201cset of strict unwritten rules that might be called Samurai Code of Conduct for Baseball Players<\/em>\u201d which \u201chas roots in Bushido<\/em>, a warriors\u2019 mode of behavior dating from the 13th<\/sup> century.\u201d (p. 37) These rules show how Japanese national character differs from American. In America<\/st1>, for instance, \u201cexcellence is equated with getting results no matter how unorthodox the form,\u201d while in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> \u201cit is more important to conform to the set way of doing things.\u201d Other articles in the Code provide for rigorous training and self discipline; that \u201cthe player must not be materialistic\u201d (a provision invoked especially by management at salary negotiation time); that a player \u201cmust follow the rule of sameness\u201d; must \u201crecognize and respect the team pecking order\u201d; and, finally, must strive for wa \u2013 \u201c<\/em>team harmony and unity\u201d:<\/p>\n

The good team is like a beautiful Japanese garden. Every tree, every rock, every blade of grass has its place. The smallest part ever so slightly out of place destroys the beauty of the whole…. When each player\u2019s ego detaches itself and joins twenty five others to become one giant ego, something magical happens. All the efforts and sacrifices the players have made at last become worthwhile. For they are now a perfect functioning unit. (p. 67)<\/p>\n

Whiting\u2019s eye and effective style have insured that this way of framing the differences between American and Japanese ball has passed into media lore. [4]<\/a><\/span><\/sup> The 1994 documentary, \u201cBaseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1>\u201d claims:<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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. [5]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

But others frame matters differently. These include Yale anthropologist William Kelly. Kelly\u2019s first book was on Tokugawa irrigation practices, so he knows feudal <\/st1>Japan<\/st1>. Kelly criticizes those writers, Whiting among them, who go go back to unexamined ancient traditions rather than look at specific responses in particular historical circumstances. [6]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

In his Yale class lecture \u201cProfessional Baseball<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Kelly agrees that some professional baseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> does fit the \u201csamurai\u201d stereotype: \u201cnot entirely, not convincingly, not uniquely, but enough to feed the press mills and the front offices and the television analysts.\u201d In fact, he says, this \u201cspin\u201d is part of the game. Our job is \u201cnot to dismiss this commentary as misguided (though much of it clearly is)\u201d but to ask who is putting these ideas about, who is believing them, and why they are appealing: \u201cThe myths are essential to the reality….\u201d Japanese baseball is \u201cnot a window onto a homogenous and unchanging national character, but is a fascinating site for seeing how these national debates and concerns play out \u2013 just as in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did baseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> develop this \u201csamurai\u201d self-image? Baseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> was shaped by the important elements of the nation in the early twentieth century \u2013 education, industry, middle class life, the government, and above all the national project. Since baseball was an American sport but Japan<\/st1> was not a colony, baseball in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> was a way of declaring independence, defiance, and creativity. From early in the century, the middle schools and colleges adopted a \u201cfighting spirit\u201d in athletics (recall that Teddy Roosevelt called for the abolition of college football in the <\/st1>United States<\/st1> when violence had become the hallmark of the game). In the 1930s the newly formed professional leagues adopted that spirit, which styled itself \u201csamurai.\u201d The government, which stepped in to shape local social institutions, used sport to train and manage its citizenry both spiritually and physically; major business corporations turned to college teams to recruit loyal executives; large commercial newspapers competed for readers by telling more and more nationalistic sports stories; transport companies bought professional teams. The Japanese public and media demanded \u201cJapanese style\u201d in sports to distinguish themselves from the foreigners and set models for self-sacrificing workers and citizens. [7]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

This summary does not do justice to Kelly\u2019s detailed argument, but should show that he does not rely on \u201cnational character.\u201d He charges that \u201cnational character\u201d is misleading because it \u201cessentializes a population,\u201d that is, explains its actions in terms of fixed codes which govern everyone rather than history or political choices; applies ethnocentric standards of judgment; and homogenizes the varieties of everyday lives.<\/p>\n

At the <\/st1>Michigan<\/st1> State<\/st1> conference, Whiting went on the counter-attack. [8]<\/a><\/span><\/sup> Whiting stated that he has lived in Japan<\/st1> since the 1970s, graduated from <\/st1>Sophia<\/st1> University<\/st1>, speaks fluent Japanese, and is immensely peeved that academics use him as a straw man. He pitted his \u201cforty years of watching baseball in Japan<\/st1>\u201d against Kelly\u2019s scholarship: \u201cI admire his effort to put together an academic history of Japanese baseball,\u201d Whiting began, but \u201cI must say that I find some of [Kelly\u2019s] interpretations of the game in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> uninformed and believe that they undermine Americans\u2019 understanding of it.\u201d To bolster his case, he inserts a few choice specimens of academic jargon.<\/p>\n

Some critics, Whiting continued, objected to the appellation \u201csamurai baseball\u201d as too simplistic, but he replied that he did not claim that Japanese big leaguers wear top knots, carry swords, or commit seppuku<\/em>: \u201csamurai baseball\u201d is just a metaphor. The metaphor may not be perfect, but \u201cmetaphor means resemblance, and so we must consider the ways in which it does fit.\u201d The word \u201csamurai\u201d is used to highlight the \u201cvery real similarities and the grounding that the game has in budo <\/em>or bugei<\/em>, 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.\u201d \u201cSamurai baseball\u201d does indeed reflect the Japanese national character since the lessons have been \u201cpassed down from generation to generation by fathers, teachers, coaches and, in adulthood, corporate bosses, right to the present day.\u201d<\/p>\n

National character studies can be abused, Whiting agrees, but denies implying that Japanese behavior is instinctive, unique or without internal contradictions. In the end, however, \u201cto suggest that there is nothing different about the way that the average Japanese and average American see the world… is to deny reality and throw the baby out with the bathwater.\u201d Whiting charges Kelly with believing that \u201cthere is nothing different about the way that the average Japanese and the average American sees the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Professor and the Journalist: Or, Wa\u2019s Up, Doc?<\/h3>\n

The clash here is not merely personal but between generations, the cultures of professions, ways of telling a story, and standards of evidence.<\/p>\n

Someone once remarked that each new generation stands on the shoulders and sometimes on the faces of previous ones. If so, Whiting must feel footprints all over his face. In spite of his many awards \u2013 in 1990, for instance, the translation of The Chrysanthemum and the Bat<\/strong> was named one of the one hundred most important Japanese books of all time \u2013 he has not been given his props by American academics. In return, he shows impatience and lack of sympathy with academic modes. To establish his bona fides, he explains that after he first went to Japan in 1962 as a military intelligence analyst and began his life long addiction to besuboru<\/em>, he majored in Japanese politics at Sophia University in Tokyo and read the works of Ruth Benedict, Hugh Patrick, and Edwin O. Reischauer (though he does not mention that American scholars were then rejecting this style of scholarship). \u201cThese were all distinguished by pages of intelligent but dense, dry exposition and a total lack of passion.\u201d When he then tried to write about the Liberal Democratic Party and such, there was zero interest. It was only when he started writing that there was a \u201cmagical home run hitter\u201d who honed his skills with a samurai sword, or that \u201cthere were star pitchers who would pitch three or four days in a row without concern for the obvious potential damage to the arm, or that spring training began in the freezing cold of mid-winter, that people started paying attention.\u201d [9]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

Whiting masterfully framed what he saw at the ball park in terms which the American public could understand at a time, before the book of the 1980s, when <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> was still exotic. James Clavell\u2019s Shogun: A Novel of Japan<\/strong> used some of the same images of feudal Japan<\/st1>, though without Whiting\u2019s knowledge and experience of <\/st1>Japan<\/st1>. [10]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

Kelly\u2019s professional socialization was different. When he started his baseball fieldwork, he found himself working in what he called the \u201cdirect shadow\u201d of his predecessor, Whiting. Japanese baseball people pegged him according to how close they thought his views were to Whiting\u2019s and most readers both outside the academy and inside it had read and often been persuaded by Whiting\u2019s portraits. What Kelly indelicately called his \u201cWhiting problem\u201d was then how to be appreciative of the older man\u2019s \u201cmuch longer experience with the game, respectful of the evocative power of his prose, yet staunchly critical of his explanatory logic…\u201d [11]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

The two men explain the way they work and illustrate the clash between academic and popular modes. The two modes differ in question setting, in standards of evidence and argument, of form, and in target audience. Whiting takes the difference personally, while Kelly is philosophical though not entirely reconciled. Kelly describes how local sports reporters were generous and helpful in the beginning of his fieldwork, and the two sides \u201crecognized uncomfortable affinities.\u201d But the journalists and the professor emphasized different parts of the story. When the manager of the team was fired, for instance, the journalists moved \u201cfrom the details of the incident to the motivation of the actors and to the consequences for future actions,\u201d while the anthropologist was \u201cmore inclined to move from the same details to exploring the premises, the process of decision-making, the alternative courses of action available, the forms of disengagement,\u201d that is, \u201cworking against the grain of the daily routine.\u201d [12]<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

Whiting\u2019s ambition is to let the American public know what it was like to be there; he takes explanations of the actors more or less at face value. Kelly wants his colleagues and students to understand the deep structure and relevance of what happened, which you can\u2019t always do in layman\u2019s language, and to relate his observations to the systematic debate in the field, which is structured by theory.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the Difference?<\/h3>\n

Decide for yourself who comes out on top. But the deeper challenge remains: how do we account for difference? Difference is everywhere: they say no two snowflakes are alike, and if you\u2019ve wondered how they know \u2013 did somebody actually look at them? \u2013 now a <\/st1>University<\/st1> of California<\/st1> physicist has a website explaining why, Is it True That No Two Snowflakes Are Alike?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDifferent\u201d is not the same as \u201cunique.\u201d A Japanese official in the 1990s wanted to restrict the importation of American skis on the grounds that Japanese snow was unique \u2013 essentialism on the slopes! True, he may only have been trying to keep American skis out of the Japanese market, but the choice of arguments is important and shows that Japanese are often involved in self-essentialization.<\/p>\n

Nor does \u201cdifferent\u201d need to mean \u201copposite\u201d or \u201cincompatible.\u201d On the one hand, Americans like to say \u201cwe\u2019re are all the same when we\u2019ve got our skins off.\u201d But what if that really means is that Americans think everyone is \u201cjust like us\u201d? The Disney historical films, for instance, proclaim multi-cultural themes but when we get back to 12th<\/sup> century China<\/st1> or 16th<\/sup> century New England<\/st1>, it turns out that Mulan and Pocohantas are actually modern American teenagers in costume. Perhaps to claim in the face of obvious differences that we\u2019re all alike really means we\u2019re afraid of difference.<\/p>\n

The opposite mistake is to portray others as unique and beyond explanation: \u201cnot<\/em> like us.\u201d In his lecture \u201cZen Aesthetes and \u2018Economic Animals: The Perils of National Character<\/span><\/a>\u201d Kelly lays into the idea that Japan<\/st1> is <\/st1>America<\/st1>\u2019s \u201cradical cultural opposite.\u201d The \u201cproper response to the claim that the Japanese are radically different from you and me is not that the Japanese are just like you and me, but rather that, in important ways, the Japanese are not like each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

To say \u201csamurai baseball\u201d implies that we have to appeal to unique Japaneseness to explain the differences but do not have to characterize American baseball in a similar way.<\/p>\n

The Anthropologist and the Sword<\/h3>\n

\u201cSamurai\u201d is now an all purpose synonym for \u201cintense\u201d \u2013 the Sunday New York Times has a column on fashionable drinks called \u201cSamurai Sipper.\u201d Jim Jarmusch\u2019s 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai<\/span><\/a> incorporates references to samurai, bushido, and French movies in a way that floats above mere historical accuracy. Yet many Japanese \u2013 ball players, executives, the Japanese Army in World War II, and even \u201ckamikaze\u201d pilots \u2013 also point to samurai ethics as an all purpose explanation for Japanese behavior and call themselves followers of bushido.<\/p>\n

Karl Friday debunks idea of explaining modern conduct by reference to historical samurai in \u201cBushido or Bull? A Medieval Historian\u2019s Perspective on the Japanese Warrior Tradition<\/span><\/a>. \u201cHanging the label of \u2018bushid\u014d\u2019 on either the ideology of the Imperial Army or the warrior ethic of medieval <\/st1>Japan<\/st1>,\u201d <\/span>he says, \u201cinvolves some fairly overt historian\u2019s sleight-of-hand.\u201d Much of the modern version of bushido was \u201cat odds with the apparent behavioral norms of the actual warrior tradition.\u201d Even the term \u201cbushid\u014d\u201d is the invention of a twentieth century Japanese, Nitobe Inazo (1862-1933), who wrote in English. Ironically, Whiting, without mentioning his role in the invention of the bushido tradition, includes in his history of the game Nitobe 1905 charge that baseball was a \u201cpickpocket\u2019s sport\u201d in which players tried to swindle their opponents and steal bases. [13]<\/a><\/span><\/sup> In fact, these samurai traditions are contradictory and could be equally well used to explain either \u201csamurai\u201d group ethic or \u201csamurai\u201d individualism, submission to authority or rebellion against it, innovation or traditionalism.<\/p>\n

Whiting\u2019s The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, <\/strong>of course, plays off the title of Ruth Benedict’s wartime classic, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword <\/strong>(Houghton Mifflin 1945), but does not use its insights. Benedict\u2019s school of anthropology rejected nineteenth century \u201cscientific racism\u201d as a way to explain human difference, and saw cultures as the weaving of universal human threads into distinctive national patterns: \u201cWe fear irreconcilable differences when the trouble is only between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.\u201d (p. 13) Although she looks to Japanese history herself for explanations, she remarks somewhat tartly that \u201cbushido\u201d is a \u201cpublicist\u2019s inspiration\u201d which \u201cbecame a slogan of the nationalists and militarists\u201d in the 1930s (p. 175), that is, in Kelly\u2019s view, just when \u201csamurai baseball\u201d became set in concrete.<\/p>\n

Anthropologists and historians do not deny that some Japanese sincerely believe these myths. Ted Bestor did an ethnographic history of another Japanese institution, the great <\/st1>Tokyo<\/st1> fish market at Tsukiji (and no, he does not call it \u201cthe chrysanthemum and the swordfish\u201d!), which puts myths of Japanese national identity in commercial and even edible form. He puts it nicely that \u201coften what is most important about the past is the present-day perception of it.\u201d [14]<\/a><\/span><\/sup> So Kelly does not hold that stripping away the \u201cmyths\u201d like layers of an onion will reveal the inner truth, only that we should look upon these myths as themselves needing explanation, not simple acceptance or rejection.<\/p>\n

Full Circle: Sushi Baseball?<\/h3>\n

<\/st1>Japan<\/st1> 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<\/strong> (March 26, 2007) has a cover story on the Boston Red Sox pitcher who was acquired this year from <\/st1>Japan<\/st1>: \u201cWhy Daisuke Matsuzaka is Worthy (And What America Will Learn From Him).\u201d Tom Verducci\u2019s article on the inside mentions a number of the practices once associated with \u201csamurai baseball\u201d: Matsuzaka trains hard and has <\/span>d\u014dryoku<\/em> or \u201cunflagging effort,\u201d but most impressive of all, last year he threw at least 130 pitches in more games than all pitchers in North American major leagues combined. This combination makes Matsuzaka a potential instrument of change, but \u201cit\u2019s his throwing regimen, rather than his place of birth, that makes him the ultimate foreigner to major league baseball\u201d (p. 60). One American coach quoted by Verducci says that the philosophy of Japanese pitchers and coaches is \u201cif you\u2019re a pitcher, you need to throw,\u201d and calls for Americans to follow suit: \u201cWe\u2019re training our pitchers to throw less. And nobody wants to try anything different.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conformity shoe is now on the other foot, but still it\u2019s hard for a sports writer to avoid the Japanese touch: \u201cMatsuzaka\u2019s pitching motion is an elegant haiku, beauty captured in three parts separated by two pauses ….\u201d Americans, Verducci goes on, want to pitch like Roger Clemens: \u201cThe compact \u2018tall and fall\u2019 is technically sound, a Sousa march with no wasted elements. Matsuzaka\u2019s free-flowing, drop-and-drive delivery is improvisational, like live jazz. Matsuzaka is coloring outside the lines…\u201d (p. 62)<\/p>\n

Now will somebody please explain why we call the October classic the \u201cWorld\u201d Series? I would like to know, because my team, the Chicago Cubs, haven\u2019t won one of them in more than a century, and next year is going be our year.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[1]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Baseball has long been fodder for international history: Richard C. Crepeau, \u201cPearl Harbor<\/st1>: A Failure of Baseball?\u201d The Journal of Popular Culture<\/strong> 15.4 (1982): 67-74; Donald Roden, \u201cBaseball and the Quest for National Dignity in Meiji Japan,\u201d The American Historical Review<\/strong> 85.3 (1980).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[2]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>For a fuller study, see his Diamonds around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball <\/strong>(<\/st1>Westport<\/st1>, CT<\/st1>: Greenwood Press, 2005).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[3]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>The Chrysanthemum and the Bat: Baseball Samurai Style <\/strong> <\/span>(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1977); You Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond<\/strong> (Macmillan 1989); The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastme<\/strong> (Warner Books, 2004; retitled for the 2005 paperback to The Samurai Way of Baseball<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[4]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>The film clip \u201cSamurai Baseball<\/span><\/a>\u201c presents Japanese baseball as a different game in about two minutes. The PBS Frontline program \u201cAmerican Game, Japanese Rules,\u201d (PBS Video, 1990) has more talking heads. \u201cMr. Baseball\u201d (1990) stars Tom Selleck as an aging hitter who goes to Japan<\/st1> and runs into problems undreamed of in Lost in Translation<\/strong> (see Alan Chalk Guide to Japanese Films<\/span><\/a> at the <\/st1>University<\/st1> of Illinois Asian Education Media Service<\/st1> site). Beat Takeshi\u2019s Boiling Point <\/span><\/a>(1990) shows a very Japanese but very unsamurai-like little league team who run up against yakuza.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[5]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Quoted on William Kelly\u2019s website (below).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[6]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Kelly\u2019s paper for the East Lansing conference is not included in the online conference volume but the website for his Yale course, \u201cJapan: The Anthropology of an Alternate Modernity (2002)<\/span><\/a>\u201d and his home page, William Kelly<\/span><\/a>, make some of his essays available on line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[7]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>William Kelly, “Caught in the Spin Cycle: An Anthropological Observer at the Sites of Japanese Professional Baseball,” in Susan O. Long, ed., Moving Targets: Ethnographies of Self and Community in <\/st1>Japan<\/st1>.<\/strong> (Ithaca<\/st1>, 2000); William Kelly, \u201cBlood and Guts in Japanese Professional Baseball,\u201d in Sepp Linhard and Sabine Frustuck, ed., The Culture of <\/st1>Japan<\/st1> as Seen through Its Leisure<\/strong> (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998): 95-111; William Kelly, \u201cIs Baseball a Global Sport? <\/st1>America<\/st1>‘s ‘National Pastime’ as a Global Sport,\u201d Global Networks<\/strong> 7.2 (2007): 15 pp. (forthcoming: kindly supplied by the author).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[8]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Whiting\u2019s talk, The Samurai Way of Baseball and the National Character Debate<\/span><\/a>, was also published on Japan Focus <\/strong>(September 29, 2006), with an introduction by Jeff Kingston, who teaches contemporary Japanese politics at Temple<\/st1> University<\/st1>, <\/st1>Tokyo<\/st1>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[9]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Whiting, \u201c<\/st1>Samurai Way<\/st1> of Baseball,\u201d <\/st1>Japan<\/strong><\/st1> Focus<\/strong>, n. 35.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[10]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>See Henry Smith, Learning from Shogun: Japanese History and Western Fantasy <\/strong>(Santa Barbara: Program in Asian Studies, 1980).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[11]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>William Kelly, \u201cCaught in the Spin Cycle,\u201d 144-145.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[12]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Kelly, \u201cCaught In the Spin Cycle, p. 141-143.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[13]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>You Gotta Have Wa<\/strong>, p. 35.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>[14]<\/span><\/sup><\/span> <\/span>Theodore C. Bestor, Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World <\/strong>(Berkeley<\/st1>: <\/st1>University<\/st1> of California<\/st1> Press, 2004): 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[A version of this piece was published on Japan Focus (April 4, 2007)] Baseball fans, lovers of a good fight, and those who are curious about how we go about understanding Japan will all welcome \u201cBaseball and Besuboru In Japan and The U.S.\u201d (Studies in Asia online), a group of essays growing out of a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[166,173,129,195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-cultural","category-historiography","category-popular-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1oA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}