Transpacific Field of Dreams

344 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 18 halftones, notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-2204-0
Published: February 2015
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-8266-5
Published: April 2012
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-4270-1
Published: April 2012

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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.

About the Author

Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu is professor of history at Michigan State University and author of Creating People of Plenty: The United States and Japan's Economic Alternatives, 1950-1960.
For more information about Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"An impressively researched contribution to the study of baseball's globalization."--Library Journal

“Exhaustively researched. . . . This is a well-written book.”--The Wall Street Journal

“Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.”--Choice

"A thorough, excellently researched . . . and professionally competent effort that will help other scholars."--Journal of American History

“A fascinating, evocative, and highly readable work that fulfills the promise of 'sports history' by illuminating the real significance that ideologies and imaginations of baseball had for the United States and Japan during these crucial moments of modern history.”--American Historical Review

"Transpacific Field of Dreams offers a compelling narrative. . . . This book is well worth reading."--Journal of Japanese Studies