| Aoife Kane | Derek Moscato | Jason Coskrey | Kerry Yo Nakagawa
Aoife Kane (Great Game Lab): On this week when the Dodgers won the World Series with their Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani and an MVP performance from Yoshinobu Yamamoto (the second ever World Series MVP from Japan), it is a great time to discuss baseball diplomacy. During a summit meeting between them during the Series, President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi even watched a part of one of the games together.
This World Series clearly captured people’s attention, and huge TV ratings, on both sides of the Pacific (32.6 million viewers in Canada, Japan, and the U.S., according to the New York Times) What do you all think about the significance of this moment?
Kerry Yo Nakagawa (Nisei Baseball Research Project founder): 32 million viewers is amazing, but in a way, it doesn’t surprise me because back in March of this year, we were very fortunate to have our Japanese American baseball exhibit at the MLB ‘Fanfest’ at the Tokyo Skytree and had 450,000 visitors to the ‘Fanfest’ and the exhibit over twelve days. 38,000 (people) a day shows you how, in Japan, they are ‘Baseball Crazy’ and love the game and their local homegrown heroes passionately at every level from little league to pro ball.
Baseball now is an international game, where a team like the Dodgers can start its season in Japan and end in Canada as World Series Champs.
Jason Coskrey (sportswriter/editor, The Japan Times): I think Japan has always had a curious relationship with baseball, in that the Japanese people took the game and molded it into their own image. So even though it’s not originally a Japanese game, it’s truly a Japanese sport.
I think also, there was a national confidence derived from the success of Hideo Nomo and Ichiro that stretched beyond the realm of sports. Of course, now the symbol of that is Shohei Ohtani, who quite possibly may retire as the best to ever play the sport.
So, to have him in Japan to open the season was a huge moment for Japan. And I think there was a significance that he wasn’t here with Samurai Japan, but with the MLB and as a World Series champion.
The impact of that can’t be quantified, just the joy and pride of Japan to see him in that light, not just on TV, but also in person, was massive.
Derek Moscato (Western Washington University professor of journalism) : This year's World Series was a huge success on multiple fronts, and part of that recipe for success was the growing internationalism of the MLB post-season. But there is a concurrent discussion about the revitalization of baseball in the United States relative to the NBA and perhaps even the NFL.
In short, younger audiences are discovering baseball for the first time, while some older fans are coming back to the game after a hiatus.
What's driving this baseball renaissance, especially in the post-season? Part of it has to do with the riveting storylines. But the global dimension is certainly part of the story. The fact that baseball takes on different philosophies or even strategies and tactics depending on where it is played in the world only adds to the richness of the sport, especially in a best-on-best context.
So having players like Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto perform at such a high level on the World Series stage along with other stars from across the Americas provides a reminder of the health of the sport in Japan and globally, but also that Major League Baseball is increasingly an international enterprise, with Japan providing a very timely case in point.
Aoife: Why do you think Japan has become such a powerhouse for baseball and why did Japanese people adopt it as their own?
Kerry: In 1872, the Yeddo Royal Acrobatic troop were the first people of Japanese ancestry to play baseball in the U.S. They would play baseball with the townspeople during the day and in the evening would do their acrobatic entertainment. If the U.S. didn’t invent baseball, the Japanese would have.
The more popular sports disciplines in Japan were karate, judo, and sumo wrestling, so baseball was the first team aspect and sport. The challenge of playing with nine teammates and one mind of defense and offense; took off at every level in Japan and even was taught as a curriculum in schools and displayed on wood block prints.
When our exhibit was at the Tokyo Skytree in March, most of the comments were surprising because visitors thought Japanese-American baseball didn’t start till after Masanori Murakami. He played in 1964 for the San Francisco Giants. We had early Issei (Japanese-American) teams going on exhibition baseball tours to Japan as early as 1914 and throughout the pre-World War II era developing baseball in Japan, Korea and China. We hope today’s Asian legacy players in MLB regard these early ‘Pioneers’ and tours as their ‘Ancestral Godfathers’ that helped Japan start professional baseball in 1936 and then later in other Asian countries.
Jason: The sport aligned with cultural norms, everyone working together for the same goal, sacrificing for the greater good, discipline, work ethic.
While the exact start of baseball in Japan remains up for debate, Horace Wilson, an American teacher in Japan, is regarded as perhaps the most important figure for introducing it to his students in 1872. Then it spread.
Then came Ichiko High School, whose team beat a team of Americans and that really helped it spread. Ichiko was like being in the army, strict, regimented and hard, and that style spread, and in many ways persists in practices, good and bad, that you see today.
The rise of high school baseball upped the game’s popularity even more, and then you had the U.S. Tours and pro baseball in Japan.
Japanese baseball places a lot of emphasis on the fundamentals and learning them until they are second nature and then moving on. Robert Whiting said something along the lines of baseball being a sport to Americans, but one Japanese turned into a martial art.
Nowadays you also have the players who are coming up with MLB as a realistic goal, which the generations before did not have after the incident with Masanori Murakami, the Nankai Hawks and the San Francisco Giants, which chilled relations until Hideo Nomo found a way.
Players like Shohei Ohtani grew up watching Hideki Matsui and Ichiro and the next batch of players will be watching Ohtani, the World Baseball Classic stars and that will push them even more.
[For context, “the incident” refers to a contractual conflict between Murakami and the Giants in 1965. It is believed to have curbed Japanese players from joining MLB in the years afterwards.]
Derek: Japan's "powerhouse" status certainly owes to a combination of amateur and professional nurturing of the sport. The Kōshien National High School tournament provides a lens into the intensity of the sport that parallels high school football in Texas, or perhaps junior hockey in Canada. It's astonishing to see the size and enthusiasm of the crowds for high school baseball. And just as baseball talent emerges from Kōshien, the country's top players can play professionally in Nippon Professional Baseball, which has numerous historic and beloved teams like the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants.
The breadth and quality of NPB has allowed the sport to flourish domestically, meaning that baseball enjoys an enduring popularity in terms of participation but also mass viewership within the country. And then of course, there is the international success of icons like Ichiro and Ohtani who represent a two-way flow of baseball between the U.S. and Japan. So Japanese players creating their own success in MLB is a big part of this.
But, the one thing we shouldn't discount is the incredible success of the World Baseball Classic. What's impressive about the WBC is how seriously it is taken by the players and the fans, and the result is skyrocketing game attendance and TV viewership.
A tip of the cap goes to MLB and Senior VP International Jim Small’s work in making WBC such a hit. And to Japan's credit, the country took the concept of a best-on-best international tournament seriously from day one. Indeed, it felt like this year's World Series captured some of the magic that made the most recent WBC so special.
Aoife: And what has the response to this year's World Series been like in Japan?
Jason: A lot of excitement, as can be expected. This year, it was not just Ohtani who had a full World Series, pitching, hitting and healthy; there were Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s heroics. Roki Sasaki also, but the former two are getting the most attention. Anything Ohtani does is news, so to see him win a second straight World Series was, of course, big news.
Aoife: Did you notice the presence of Dodgers jerseys this week in Japan?
Jason: Japan is not a big jersey-wearing culture generally, unless people are going to games/events, so I didn’t.
I notice a lot of Dodgers hats, but that is not particularly unusual. There were Angels hats when he was there, and more Dodgers hats now, plus L.A. was already somewhat popular among MLB teams.
Aoife: Is there a common misconception about the U.S.-Japan baseball relationship that you would like to debunk? (or maybe something you want people to know about this relationship)
Jason: I don’t think people appreciate the level of play in Japan and Japanese baseball in general. It comes from a general unfamiliarity and seeing so many players leave for MLB.
But there are still good players in Japan. The game is seeing a drop in participation at the grassroots level with more competition for kids from soccer, tech and all sorts of things that may impact the future, but at present, Japan is a major player in baseball, as the WBC has shown. NPB can be much better, but average attendance was still 31,515. Hanshin (Tigers) was 41,722.
Perhaps there is a reckoning down the road, but the game is not a minor league outpost. Interest and the level of play remain high, from high school on up.
[For context, average attendance in MLB this year were just over 29,000.]
Aoife: Without baseball, do you think the U.S.-Japan relationship would be significantly different?
Derek: I don't think it would be significantly different in terms of broad political relations and economic linkages. The strong Japan-U.S. relationship is really a testament to longstanding investment in diplomacy and soft power initiatives across the board for many years now. This certainly includes the baseball (and other sporting) flows but it also comprises a range of cultural or commercial areas such as cinema, anime, manga, fashion, architecture, and technology.
We can look back to the rise of a formal government program like "Cool Japan" which actively sought to enhance the nation's brand through a cultural economy, or the popularity of Douglas McGray's famous 2002 article about "Japan's Gross National Cool" in Foreign Policy magazine.
The bigger picture of diplomacy and national relations features a lot of variables and plenty of history. But baseball is unique in that it has such a wide appeal in both countries, and so it offers a much wider entry point for citizen exchange and dialogue which of course becomes an exchange of national values and customs.
Aoife: Will the MLB become even more internationally focused? Is Japan’s baseball prowess likely to grow and produce more international superstars as a result?
Kerry: When the Hanshin Tigers beat the (LA) Dodgers and the (Chicago) Cubs in March 2025, in Japan, I think that made a huge statement, about the skill level between U.S. major leaguers and players in the NPB.
I got to witness Koshien Daisuke Matsuzaka throw seventeen innings for the win and then throw a no-hitter in the final. It was the most impressive athletic physical performance by a pitcher I’ve seen; but Yamamoto pitching in game seven was also a Herculean, incredible example of players from Japan and other countries demonstrating their world class abilities and raising the MLB bar even higher at an international level.
It would be amazing to see in the future the World Series champs play the champions of the Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico, and South American leagues. And I guess the WBC already covers the all-stars of those leagues.
Baseball has always been a “cultural mirror” and a reflection of American society; but that has changed for the betterment of the world and popularity of this now international game and its stars.
At the Seattle Mariners All-Star game, we got a quote from Shohei Ohtani when asked about the early ‘Pioneers’ goodwill tours to Japan. “I definitely feel all the history of the guys that came before me who opened the door for me to be able to play over here.”