Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Honors Thesis (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. History Dept.

Advisor(s)

Professor Inga Kim Diederich

Second Advisor

Second Reader: Professor Larissa J. Taylor

Abstract

Baseball, America’s “national pastime,” has a similarly prominent role in Japanese culture and the nation’s history. Since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball at professional, collegiate, high school, and youth levels has become increasingly prominent within each nation. As baseball became increasingly central to each nation's social and cultural identities, it also began to play a critical role in furthering the nations’ bilateral relationship.

The paper explores various periods where baseball has influenced diplomatic relations, especially “soft diplomacy” and cultural exchange between each nation’s citizens. This includes baseball’s institutionalization into Japan’s education systems during the Meiji Restoration, as well as the 1930s “Baseball Tours,” when American and Japanese professional ballplayers played against one another despite pre-war tensions, and the post-war era when U.S. officials reintroduced baseball to Japan to democratize the citizens and social conditions of “new Japan.” The study also assesses Japanese players’ impact on Major League Baseball and how their success has furthered cultural exchange, challenged racial stereotypes, and increased collaboration between the two nations’ economic and political structures.

Much more than just a game, baseball continues to develop in both nations and is becoming arguably more significant in a world of increasingly globalized athletics. Overall, this honors thesis aims to emphasize how baseball has repeatedly connected the citizens of both nations and helped further the robust U.S.-Japan alliance that we see today.

Keywords

Baseball, U.S., Japan, Diplomacy, Soft Diplomacy, Cultural Exchange, Collaboration, East Asia, Bushido, MLB, NPB

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