| Summary/Abstract |
Baseball occupies a privileged position as Japan’s most popular sport, commanding ample attention across numerous levels and contexts of play. Baseball’s popularity has also inspired value-laden and sometimes nationalistic language around its athletes and how the sport is played. These associations, linking baseball and its athletes to the Japanese nation today, arise in a diverse sporting landscape where transnational movement by athletically gifted individuals is possible. This article asks how the bodies of non-Japanese baseball players are remade or rejected as Japanese baseball bodies. Through a focus on interpretations of bodily capability and athletic potential, I map shifting views of transnational identity as they are tied to bodily interpretations. I argue that how athlete’s accomplishments and failures are viewed and interpreted insidiously serve to embed perceptions of racial and ethnic difference. These perceptions of difference divide Japanese from non-Japanese baseball players through a focus on height, strength, and speed as well as attitude, reverence, and commitment to the team and its hierarchies. Baseball thereby becomes a conduit that perpetuates and preserves categories of ethno-racial difference and superficial views of the other.
|