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Ichiko’s victories over Yokohama-based American adult teams, sometimes bolstered by sailors, sparked Japanese interest in the game which remains strong. Japan’s first team, the Shimbashi Athletic Club, was formed by American-educated engineer Hiroshi Hiraoka in 1878 among employees of Japan’s first railroad between Yokohama and Shimbashi in Tokyo. The contracted port of Yokohama hosted Japan’s first matches at least as early as 1871 between American merchants and American navy sailors. The team of “Ichiko”, the academic elite of Tokyo’s first graduate school, was an organic grassroots effort that took some Western ideas that came with the new sport and married them to the ethos of the warrior code. This mentality came to baseball by accident, thanks in part to the success of Japan’s first national baseball heroes, 24 years after Wilson introduced the game. More recently, increased interaction with the American major leagues has given players more choice, while declining birth rates and changing social norms have changed how the Japanese view the century-old mentality of winning at all cost. The economic boom following World War I opened the door to professionals, while the end of World War II brought in veterans, whose training added military-style physical discipline to a sporting activity. Imported incidentally as the baggage that came with the foreign learning necessary to strengthen Japan and enable it to fend off Western imperialist intrusion, baseball became a beacon of hope when a team of schoolboys soundly beat teams of expatriate American adults in 1896.Įven as Japan struggled to stifle democracy at home and expand its imperial influence in East Asia, liberal elements in baseball were increasingly driven into pursuit of “purely Japanese”. Over the years, Japan’s changing political goals and economic and social circumstances have left their mark on the game which has come to be known as “yakyu” or field ball. How Japan rose from a newly unified nation with no sporting tradition other than martial arts to a global baseball powerhouse is a story of curiosity about foreign ideas, national identity, authoritarianism and commercial exploitation, but above all of passion. (Photo courtesy of Yokohama Urban History Museum) (Essonne Info) Babe Ruth, the great American baseball player, on the Yokohama field during America’s decisive major league tour of Japan in 1934.