How Baseball Took Root in Japan — Arrival and the Birth of a Craze

When summer comes, the whole nation turns its eyes to Koshien, and the course of the pennant race fills the newspapers and television. Baseball is now a sport as natural to the Japanese as the air they breathe. And yet few people pause to recall that this game was originally a foreign pastime, born in America. A single ball and a single bat crossed the Pacific, and over roughly half a century they won the hearts of people in a land of wholly different soil. The story of Japanese baseball begins in the early Meiji era, with a small scene in which a single foreign teacher threw a ball for his students to see.

A Foreign Ball Game Crosses the Sea

Baseball came to Japan in the early Meiji era, amid the rush of civilization and enlightenment. It is generally said that in 1872 (Meiji 5), the American teacher Horace Wilson, who taught English and other subjects at the First Middle School of the First University District, introduced baseball to his students. The school in time became Kaisei School (a forerunner that would lead to the University of Tokyo), and once the grounds were ready, the students are said to have grown able to divide into offense and defense and play actual games.

That said, there are various accounts of who first introduced the game and when, and it is more accurate to say that the view of Wilson as ‘the man who brought it over’ is the one most widely known. What is certain is that very early on, baseball spread outward from the limited setting of a Tokyo school. The young men who learned the game there scattered to schools across the country, and through them as carriers, baseball slowly sank its roots throughout Japan.

Why was it accepted so quickly? In the background was the mood of an age in which people strove to learn everything Western. Baseball was not merely play; it joined naturally with the setting of the school as a new form of education that trained both body and mind. The imported ball game had begun, little by little, to become ‘their own’ on Japanese soil.

The Glory of Ichiko and the Way of Baseball Bound to Bushido

In the late Meiji era, the first great spark of baseball fever was lit by the elite First Higher School (Ichiko). In 1896 (Meiji 29), the event in which Ichiko defeated a team of foreigners living in Yokohama is said to have thrilled the people of the time. Japanese students had beaten Americans from the home of the game itself, and that story tied baseball to national prestige and pride, and is said to have pushed the sport’s popularity sharply upward.

Around this time, a distinctive spirit began to dwell in Japanese baseball. The etiquette of beginning and ending with a bow, and an attitude that valued the willingness to endure hard practice over victory itself. Though it was a sport that had come from the West, its substance came to be understood as a ‘way of baseball’ akin to Japan’s ancient martial arts. Suishu Tobita, who would later become a celebrated manager of the Waseda University baseball club, is known as a man who regarded baseball as a path for disciplining body and mind, and who preached an attitude that valued practice above the game itself.

At the university level, the ‘Waseda-Keio game’ between Waseda and Keio Gijuku grew into a great event that sent spectators into a frenzy. The earnest contests of young men carrying the honor of their schools became, beyond the frame of mere sport, a story into which people poured their emotions. In this way baseball, centered on the world of students, gained a firm popular following.

The Origins of Koshien and a Craze Spreading Nationwide

Baseball, once the preserve of students alone, came in time to draw in far wider circles of people. A great turning point was the first National Secondary School Baseball Championship, held in 1915 (Taisho 4). Hosted by an Osaka newspaper, this tournament — in which secondary schools (equivalent to today’s high schools) that had won their way up from each region competed for supremacy on a single stage — became the origin of the national tournament later called the ‘summer Koshien.’

This tournament carried a meaning beyond merely competing for victory or defeat. The custom of exchanging bows before and after a game was enforced from the opening match, and at its root, it was said, lay the spirit of bushido. Rather than transplanting professionalized American baseball as it was, the aim was the discipline of body and mind — and the organizers’ raising of that banner symbolizes the direction of Japan’s baseball culture. The sight of young players fighting as representatives of their home regions strongly stirred the pride and emotional investment of local people.

It must not be overlooked that the medium of the newspaper supported this fervor. The course of games was reported prominently in print, and the stories of teams advancing drew readers’ interest. The structure in which sport and the media joined hands and magnified one another was already budding in this era. Baseball was now growing from a sport for a limited circle of students into a national concern shared across regions and generations.

1936, the Birth of Professional Baseball

Even as student baseball blossomed, another great movement was advancing. It was an attempt to make baseball a profession — that is, to build teams of players who would fight as ‘professionals,’ drawing a salary.

The trigger was the US-Japan baseball series of 1934 (Showa 9). This great event, which invited star American players such as Babe Ruth to play matches against an All-Japan team in various places, also included young Japanese talents such as Eiji Sawamura. The All-Japan side was forced into a hard struggle against the formidable home-country opponents, but Sawamura’s fine pitching in a game at Shizuoka has been handed down to this day as a tale often retold. Out of the players gathered for this US-Japan series, at the end of that year the Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club — the later forerunner of the Giants — was formed.

In 1936, several clubs joined together to form the Japanese Professional Baseball League, and the following year league play began in earnest. Clubs backed by companies and newspapers competed for victory before crowds — and so Japan’s professional baseball gave its first cry. Student baseball, honoring the spirit of the amateur, and professional baseball, drawing crowds as a business. By the standing side by side of these two worlds of differing character, Japanese baseball gained still greater depth.

The foreign ball game that began in a small Meiji classroom had, over half a century and more, transformed into a national sport that drew in students and adults alike. A spirit of courtesy and discipline, pride in one’s home region and alma mater, and the excitement of pinning one’s dreams on star players — the emotions the Japanese poured into baseball were never of a single kind. And yet this craze, which had at last taken root, was soon to be swept up in the great currents of the age. The day when baseball itself would be questioned as ‘the enemy’s pastime’ was drawing close at hand.