Transpacific field of dreams [electronic resource] : how baseball linked the United States and Japan in peace and war / Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu.

Cover image for Transpacific field of dreams [electronic resource] : how baseball linked the United States and Japan in peace and war / Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu.

ISBN:

9780807882665

9781469601830

Title:

Transpacific field of dreams [electronic resource] : how baseball linked the United States and Japan in peace and war / Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu.

Author:

Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri.

Personal Author:

Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri.

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (583 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

1. Pacific crossings -- 2. Colonial baseball -- 3. Leagues of their own -- 4. The business of baseball -- 5. Empires of fun and games -- 6. Spartan leagues -- 7. A field of new dreams -- 8. The search for postwar order.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Baseball -- Political aspects -- United States.

Baseball -- Political aspects -- Japan.

Geographic Term:

Japan -- Foreign relations -- United States.

United States -- Foreign relations -- Japan.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2012

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
796.357	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Baseball has joined America and Japan, even in times of strife, for over 150 years. After the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu explains, baseball was introduced there by American employees of the Japanese government tasked with bringing Western knowledge and technology to the country, and Japanese students in the United States soon became avid players. In the early twentieth century, visiting Japanese warships fielded teams that played against American teams, and a Negro League team arranged tours to Japan. By the 1930s, professional baseball was organized in Japan where it continued to be played during and after World War II; it was even played in Japanese American internment camps in the United States during the war.

From early on, Guthrie-Shimizu argues, baseball carried American values to Japan, and by the mid-twentieth century, the sport had become emblematic of Japan's modernization and of America's growing influence in the Pacific world. Guthrie-Shimizu contends that baseball provides unique insight into U.S.-Japanese relations during times of war and peace and, in fact, is central to understanding postwar reconciliation. In telling this often surprising history, Transpacific Field of Dreams shines a light on globalization's unlikely, and at times accidental, participants.

Reviews (2)

Choice Review

As baseball became the US national game, the US attempted to spread the sport elsewhere, achieving success in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Guthrie-Shimizu (Michigan State Univ.) studies baseball's history in Japan in order to illuminate US-Japanese relations and the growth of American influence there. American missionaries brought baseball to Japan in 1872 and the sport took root, helped by American team tours. The author sees this development as an early example of globalization, since Japanese baseball normally followed American sporting developments. Eventually, Japan established lively high school and college competitions, and then semipro and professional leagues, the latter mirroring the US versions. Japan's imperial expansion spread baseball to Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria; Japanese teams competed in international tournaments and toured other countries energetically. Meanwhile, baseball penetrated the Japanese American communities in Hawai'i and on the West Coast of North America, Vancouver included, helping Japanese communities identify with their new country, even during wartime internment. WW II decimated baseball in Japan, but postwar American occupation authorities were successful in encouraging its rebirth there as another means to establish democracy and to facilitate postwar reconciliation. Of value to those interested in Pacific Rim history as well as sports, baseball, and Japanese culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. P. L. de Rosa Bridgewater State University

Library Journal Review

Guthrie-Shimizu (history, Michigan State Univ.) draws extensively on both English-language and Japanese sources to explore the U.S.-Japanese baseball connections developed beginning around 1870, even given geographical and cultural differences, racial antipathies, and the enmity of World War II. The sport became "a transoceanic pastime," influenced by Japanese students returning from study abroad, A.G. Spalding's entrepreneurial bent, baseball's tie to "traditional Japanese virtues," world tours by U.S. major leaguers-including Babe Ruth's 1934 tour (addressed in Robert K. Fitts's Banzai Babe Ruth, reviewed above)-Japanese professionalism, and collegiate baseball exchanges. The author shows that World War II and U.S. internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese aliens failed to stifle Japanese enthusiasm for baseball. While an impressively researched contribution to the study of baseball's globalization, this will have limited appeal to general readers.-R.C. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.