Perhaps it’s strange to think of a sport as a national pastime, given that many transcend borders with global networks and shared histories that span centuries. Yet American-born sports are largely played only in America and perhaps it’s the relatively small scale of their most successful export, baseball, that makes it such a rich source of cultural exchange. There might therefore be a mild contradiction that both the US and Japan think of baseball as a national game as if it could belong only to one, though they don’t so much tussle for the soul of the sport as bounce it back and forth in a continual process of exchange.
Yuriko Gamo Romer’s documentary Diamond Diplomacy explores the way in which baseball has fostered a relationship between the two nations that has survived severe strain. As a historian points out, baseball predates judo in Japan and became a symbol of its modernisation during the Meiji era. As soon as they began to play, Japan was beating the Americans at their own game as teams of schoolboys triumphed over elite squads from local warships leaving the sailors with a degree of wounded pride to have lost at a game they created.
A video montage likens the equipment worn by the catcher to that worn by kendo players with its chest armour and grilled visor, while other interviewees wonder if it doesn’t play into a cultural mindset in which the individual sublimates themselves into a collective and commits themselves to a higher goal as a member of a team. Others describe it as Japan’s first purely recreational sport and suggest that it adopted samurai traits and martial arts philosophy which gave it a seriousness and a rigour that was at odds with the way the game was played in the US. American players who later came to play in Japan report consternation with the training regime, explaining that in general they only practised for a couple of hours before hitting the golf course while Japanese players trained 10 hours a day. This intensity may have contributed to the team spirit, but also, according to some, reflects a fundamental difference in cultural philosophies, While American players believe one is born with talent and can sharpen it only to a certain extent, in Japan they believe that it’s hard work that produces results and the more you train the better you can get regardless of innate talent.
Nevertheless, according the documentary, Japanese baseball fans continue to look up to the American leagues and it was the process of bringing over top stars such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during the 1930s that fostered a sense of connection between the two nations. These sporting relationships became a way of staving off conflict and brokering peace, though endured even once war had broken out. Internees in America describe finding hope and purpose in self-built diamonds, while the resurgence of baseball also contributed to the post-war recovery and a restored sense of national pride. In America, however, Japanese players were prevented from joining the major leagues and faced discrimination until Mashi Murakami was signed to play in the US in the mid-1960s. No other Japanese players were allowed to go play in America until Hideo Nomo exploited a loophole by retiring to accept a transfer only to be viewed as a traitor in Japan.
Nevertheless, the nation soon came round and Nomo’s games were later broadcast live on television making him a national hero. The film positions Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani as the inheritors of this legacy, continuing the cross-cultural interplay between the two nations into the present day. An interviewee charts changing attitudes to the US and finds a correlation between the presence of Japanese players in America, suggesting that they fell to their lowest in the post-war period during the economic conflicts of the 1980s in which the US feared the newly dominant force of Japan in the bubble era, but improving with the arrival of Japanese players in US leagues in the lost decade of the ‘90s. Baseball continues to be a more isolated sport than some with each nation mainly focussed on their domestic game with no formal infrastructure for international competition outside of special organised matches, but perhaps that’s what makes this unique relationship possible in the push and pull of cross-cultural interaction through the shared love of sport.
Diamond Diplomacy screens 25th April as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase.
Trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 