The past 30 years in Japan is often painted as a period of stagnation, decline and waning international influence. Sport is one major exception as demonstrated by Shohei Ohtani’s domination of the game that the US invented in the World Baseball Classic (WBC).
It also serves as a morale booster for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is preparing to host the G7 summit in May.
On Wednesday morning in Tokyo, the same day that the capital’s cherry blossoms reached full bloom, Samurai Japan defeated Team USA in a game in Miami that in the words of one writer “will be talked about 100 years from now.”
Illustration: Kevin Sheu
It was the country’s third time to win the tournament, but perhaps the first in which they have faced a US team that takes the competition as seriously as Japan itself does, sending some of professional baseball’s very best.
Like blue jeans and whiskey, baseball might become one of the imported inventions where the island nation has surpassed the creators. Just a quarter of a century ago, it delighted in simply having someone who was able to compete in Major League Baseball when Hideo Nomo became the first player to permanently relocate to the US. In Ohtani, the country now boasts a two-way player who at least one analyst has called the best to ever play the game.
And it is not just the “great American pastime”: While Japan’s economy has slumbered, its standing has improved in multiple sports. It boasts some of the best in the world from golf to figure skating, and took home more than five times as many Olympic gold medals in Tokyo as it did in Sydney 23 years ago.
The women’s soccer team, known as Nadeshiko Japan, won the World Cup in 2011. In rugby union, the Brave Blossoms have emerged as a top-10 nation in the past few years, claiming the scalps of traditional powers South Africa and Ireland in successive Rugby World Cups, as well as hosting the 2019 event.
The J-League, the country’s professional soccer league, was born 30 years ago this year as the reality of the economic bubble bursting began to bite. Japan is home to several of Europe’s most exciting players, while the national team (the Samurai Blue — these nicknames keep coming) has qualified for seven FIFA World Cups in a row, and now routinely reaches the knockout stages.
Contrast that with China, which a decade on has failed to meet the first of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) goals to qualify for a FIFA World Cup, much less his final two: hosting and eventually winning it.
That these successes have come as foreigners, mostly from Mongolia, have dominated Japan’s national sport of sumo is an irony.
Soft-power triumphs are increasingly important in a world where sports are a powerful diplomatic tool — the reason the likes of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are seeking to buy influence, or “sportswash” away human rights concerns, through ownership of some of the world’s largest teams.
And while Japan is no sportswasher, it needs soft-power success. A quarter of a century ago, its economy dwarfed China’s. While it now cannot compete on that front, through sporting success, media and international aid, it can punch above its economic weight. The charismatic, expressive Ohtani is a wonderful ambassador for country and sport alike; the nation’s easygoing fans, whether cleaning up stadiums or grinding imaginary pepper mills, have endeared themselves to millions.
That is the type of power that has been crucial to what has been the most successful week of Kishida’s time in office so far: It saw him restoring cordial ties with South Korea and deepen relations with India.
Kishida, who on Thursday hosted the country’s baseball heroes at his offices, would have hoped that a little of Ohtani’s charisma rubbed off on him, too, as G7 leaders meet in the prime minister’s home constituency of Hiroshima next month.
He will also benefit from being pictured shaking hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — whom he invited to participate in the G7 summit — just as Xi was rubbing shoulders with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The US ambassador to Japan explicitly outlined the contrast, saying that Kishida sought a “brighter future for people everywhere,” while Xi was “trying to turn out the lights on freedom.”
It is another example of how Tokyo’s role internationally is expanding. The sporting success advertises the new reality of a country unfairly categorized as never-changing.
An increasingly diverse population is evident among the new generation of stars — tennis star Naomi Osaka, whose father is Haitian; Rui Hachimura of the Los Angeles Lakers, whose father hails from Benin; or WBC breakout Lars Nootbaar, whose mother is Japanese, but who was raised in California and does not speak the language.
About one in 50 births in Japan these days are to couples in which one parent is not Japanese.
This success has not come for free. The country’s sports budget has doubled in the past 15 years — with an explicit goal of keeping the population fitter and healthier for longer, seen as an imperative in a rapidly aging society where medical spending has also ballooned.
Despite the challenges, Ohtani and other national heroes display a self-belief that is at odds with a narrative of terminal decline, summed up in a speech before the WBC final in which the Los Angeles Angels star urged his teammates to discard their admiration for their more famous rivals and come out on top of them instead.
Off the field and on, it is precisely the type of attitude the country needs.
Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan, South Korea and North Korea. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief.
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