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.