Though one might naturally assume that baseball came to Japan during the U.S. occupation after World War II, this quintessential American sport was actually one of Japan’s earliest Western imports, during the Meiji Restoration, having arrived in the archipelago in 1872. Brought by an American, the sport was quickly adopted, and adapted, by the Japanese, and thus has a history in Japan nearly as long as its history in its home country.
Which is not to say that the Japanese play the sport the same way as Americans – or at least, with the same attitude. While Americans celebrate the home run hitters and fastball pitchers who rise above their peers to become baseball stars, and individual stats are followed obsessively by fans, the Japanese, true to their cultural heritage, make team cohesion and harmony the focus. As with many other imports, the Japanese have made baseball – now besuboru (bay-sue-boe-rue) – into something distinctly Japanese.
The Japanese National Tourism Organization once noted that besuboru (also known in Japan as yakyu, a combination of the characters for “field” and “ball”) is so familiar to the Japanese that some are surprised when they hear that it started in the United States.
Interaction between Japanese and American teams has been a feature of Japanese besuboru from the start, culminating in 1934, when an American All-Star team that included Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Lefty Gomez visited Japan to play 16 exhibition games against the All-Nippon Stars, a largely-amateur assembly. The Americans won every game – Ruth alone homered 13 times in 16 games – but the Japanese were inspired by several close games, and the characteristic Japanese sense that, were they to stick to it, they could challenge the Americans. Soon enough, the Japanese turned pro.