You Gotta Have Wa

In my rush to read Japanese literature, I would not have guessed I would end up with a book on Japanese baseball, like the 1990 title You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting. As I’ve been trying to learn more about Japanese culture, it just so happens I could not have found a better source of information. The rules in baseball or besuboru are the same in the U.S. as the rules in Japan, but the cultural differences that influence how the game is conducted are fascinating. Two words are used to define baseball in Japan, wa, and doryoku. Wa means harmony and doryoku means effort.

 

This book is 34 years old and much has changed since then. It was accepted in America that the Japanese game was inferior, and the post WWII era supported that as the U.S.-Japan games were totally dominated by the Americans. However, in 2024, we have more Japanese players in the majors than ever before, and most notably we have Shohei Ohtani who is playing at a level that Americans have not seen since Babe Ruth. The administration of the game has evolved as have the salaries, but this is a book about cultural differences and cultural clashes.

 

Whiting paraphrased a line from Bob Horner, a former major leaguer who finished his career in Japan after a successful career in America’s major leagues. Horner said American’s played ball. Japanese worked at it. To further explain this difference, Whiting quotoed Chris Arnold, a former player for both San Francisco Giants and Kintetsu Buffalo: “I’ll tell you the big difference between Japan and the U.S. In the U.S., we believe that a player has a certain amount of natural ability and with practice he reaches a certain peak point, but after that no amount of practice will make him better – because after a certain point your ability reaches its limits. But the Japanese believe there is no peak point. They don’t recognize limits.” Whiting explained, “For Americans baseball is a job. For the Japanese it is a way of life.”

 

Harmony in the Japanese game infers the notion of just going along with team rules, whatever that may be. It’s a statement about cohesion of everyone involved with a team, and it’s a belief against individualism. Arguing with an umpire or the manager is definitely not part of the Japanese culture. It also impacted how one negotiated with a team about the players’ contracts. Whiting presented a brief history of Japan and the development of amateur and professional competitions, as well as the effect of WWII on the Japanese game. The Japanese have two leagues which each have six teams, and they play a 130-game schedule. He writes of the trouble American’s have adjusting to the small ball Japanese game and the expectations of their conduct, and he writes of the difficulties of the Japanese players as they try to adjust to the presence of people who play ball. One of the shocks for Americans was the amount of drilling expected of Japanese players. It was typical in the 1990s for Japanese players to have rigorous workouts for 2 ½ hours before every game, often leaving them exhausted by the time the games started. The Americans noticed that the Japanese were physically spent by the time the season was halfway through. Pitchers were expected to throw every day of the season and to pitch despite the pain that it was causing.

 

I thought the richest part of the book was the author’s descriptions of both Americans and Japanese players and managers talking about each other and their bafflement at those differences. He particularly followed stars from both sides of these clashes. When I combine the information about baseball differences between the U.S. and Japan with the fiction and nonfiction books I have been reading about Japan, the extent of misunderstanding by both sides of this equation in all facets of life is staggering. I’m planning to read another besuboru book, as well as some other material. Although my 16 days in Japan are tightly scheduled, I’m trying to figure out how to get to a game in Tokyo or Osaka so I can witness the frenzy of Japanese baseball fans that I have been learning about.