Outline for April 8 session – Japan anthropology

Japan’s changing sportscape: Baseball and beyond

I. The Japanese sportscape

1. National sportscapes

2. Sports in 20th-century Japan

Baseball as center sport, driving the sports year
Sumo as nativist counter-point + a penumbra of other sports
A sports underbelly of pro wrestling and the trinity of gambling sports (horse racing, velodrome cycling, and powerboat racing)
Sports locations: schools, companies, professional leagues, international mega-events (Olympics, World Cup, etc.)
Sports media: newspapers, daily sports newspapers, television and sports manga/anime

3. Baseball as Japan’s 20th-century center sport: Five roles in shaping popular sensibilities

As an imagery of samurai with bats, baseball has fostered a sports nationalism in US-Japan relations
As a target of media promotion and crucial site of metropolitan leisure, baseball has been the most popular form of urban edu-tainment
As the premier sport in secondary schooling, baseball has been a model for adolescent masculinity
As the dominant professional team sport, baseball has been a template for corporate organization
As a league sport of local teams, baseball has been a vehicle for regional loyalties and rivalries

II. The Kōshien high school baseball tournament as national festival

1. Kōshien Stadium over eight decades: From metropolitan modernism to sacred theater

2. The national high school baseball tournaments at Kōshien: Mainstream Japan’s matsuri (festival)

III. The professional sports world of the Hanshin Tigers

1. The players

Team rosters are large (65-70 players) and the spread of talent is wide
There is a first team and a farm team but no minor leagues
Baseball players are independent contractors, not company employees
Baseball careers are brief and unpredictable
Baseball is highly positional, a mix of artisanal and generic skills
Baseball is a game of long seasons, of finely-graded statistical measurements and percentages of success, of performing in public
Seniority, salary, and performance do not coincide

2. The management

Three levels above and behind the players | the manager, the front office, & the parent company
The manager: Is he domain lord or corporate brand or just a department head?
Factions and frictions in the front office | Suits vs. uniforms, 4 employee types, university factions
Hanshin Dentetsu as parent company | The railroad as public entity, conservative management style

3. The spectators and supporters

Watching and following: A wide range of affiliation, affection, attention, and activity
The stereotype of Hanshin fans as mindless, fanatical groupies
Baseball spectatorship as participant-observation
The Private Association of Fan Clubs: very organized, very independent, very vocal, very social

4. The media

IV. Hanshin baseball as regional rivalry and masculine melodrama in mainstream Japan

1. The Hanshin Tigers and Osaka’s second-city complex

Osaka’s metropolitan culture
Post-1964 Olympics: Osaka’s second-city complex and the emergence of a “Kansai” identity
Hanshin Tigers as the ne’er do well son and lovable loser
Hanshin Tigers baseball and the inevitability of loss

2. Hanshin Tigers baseball as masculine, melodramatic workplace soap opera

Unpacking baseball masculinity, melodramatic emotion, soap opera narrative, and workplace plots
Baseball as an everyday, year-round spectator sport (narratives + numbers –> mediated intimacy)
Hanshin Tigers, the nature of the Osaka economy, and the plight of subsidiary company workplaces
The role of the sports papers

V. Japanese sports in the 21st century

1. The declining fortunes of baseball and sumo

2. The rising prospects of soccer in post-mainstream Japan