The National Game- Baseball to Japan and Back |

By Gaetano Kazuo Maida. (May 5, 2026)

In these heady days of the astonishing exploits of the Japanese baseball phenom Shohei Ohtani, now with the Los Angeles Dodgers (he’s a unique double-threat: an overpowering pitcher and a home run hitter who steals bases), it may be hard to fathom the early days of Japanese players here—indeed, of Japanese baseball itself.

Ohtani doesn’t play a big part in Yuriko Gamo Romer’s delightful film Diamond Diplomacy; he doesn’t have to. “Baseball is older than judo,” we hear with some surprise, and a strong relationship between martial arts and the game is drawn. The pitcher-batter confrontation in particular is likened to a kendo (wooden sword) match. “Baseball so suits the Japanese that if Americans hadn’t invented it , the Japanese probably would have,” Bob Whiting, author of the authoritative study of Japanese baseball You Gotta Have Wa, tells us.

There are three threads in Diamond Diplomacy: first is the premise of the title—the role of baseball, loved by both countries for a hundred and fifty years, in developing and maintaining relations between the two nations despite all. The second is the role of the game in helping keep up community spirits among the Japanese Americans interned in the WWII camps in this country. And the third is the advent of Japanese players on American teams.

Let me say just in passing that I come by my baseball affection honestly. Half-Japanese, I grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s when the New York Yankees seemed to rule the majors (I know, I know, but give me a break, it was the local team!). I wore Mickey Mantle’s number seven in the Bronxwood Little League though I was an infielder, not an outfielder, and I never hit a home run. I had an early cheap (Japanese!) transistor radio with a wired earphone that I would fish through my shirt so I could listen to the World Series during class and only occasionally give myself away by irrepressibly exclaiming if the Yankees scored or Mantle hit a homer. Stickball and sandlot baseball were the obsessions for Bronx boys in those days.

But it wasn’t easy for a Japanese American kid to fit in with the diverse neighborhood I grew up in so soon after WWII. Primarily Italian at first, the nearly rural blocks around our house started filling in with new homes and Black and Puerto Rican families, while the local schools had a large population of Jewish students. War films were very popular on television, and the Japanese were usually the enemy (and always lost); I was often the recipient of that negativity. Baseball—where, unlike in basketball or football, a short and thin guy like me could excel with some practice—was a refuge of sorts. But there were no Japanese American players on major league teams (hence my number seven!).

But I digress. Director Romer (Mrs. Judo) spent several years developing this fascinating story, and she assembled an all star team of commentators and creatives to deliver this spirited film. She digs down into our history of racial discrimination to highlight not just the well-known Negro Leagues, but Italian, Irish, Latino, and Japanese semi-pro baseball associations. And she dives into Japanese history to connect the dots between the American Commodore Perry’s naval expeditions to Japan in the 1850s which helped trigger the Meiji Restoration of the monarchy, and the subsequent national project of rapid Westernization, with the interestingly parallel embrace of the first team sport in Japanese history, basuboru.

American visitors to Japan—mostly seamen, diplomats, and traders—brought baseball with them as early as the 1870s, and Japanese teams were formed at universities. Team spirit dominated over individual performance, and baseball became the national sport in 1896. They got good fast, beating early American teams by wide margins, helping fuel a nascent nationalism that would result in successful wars with China, Korea, and Russia.

American teams, both from the Negro Leagues as well as MLB, toured there (even Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig led an all star team to play Japan’s all star team in the 1930s; that may have even forestalled the beginning of WWII). The goodwill though wasn’t enough to prevent the 1942 Article 9066 here, declaring that all coastal residents of Japanese descent, whether citizens or not, be interned at designated camps in places as far away as Alabama, one of the darkest chapters of American history only recently superseded. These were families, mostly of citizens, nissei or sansei (first or second generation Americans), and they were forced to make frugal lives in captivity, with baseball one of the few bright spots.

After the war, a 1949 tour of Japan by the San Francisco Seals rekindled old friendships. In 1964 Japanese Murakami “Mashi” Masanori, a pitcher, was signed by the San Francisco Giants. Many American players eventually found a second life by playing on Japanese teams. By the 1990s, Japanese stars including Hideo Nomo and Ichiro Suzuki were leading members of their teams.

Editor Ken Schneider’s adroit use of the incredible archival stills and footage dug up by Megumi Nishikura, the archive producer, lends real energy to the film, as does the lively score by Goh Nakamura (and stay through the credits!). A virtual who’s who of Bay Area documentary veterans had roles in helping get the film to the finish line (despite a key NEH grant being taken away by the administration in DC), including producers Marc Smolowitz and Loi Ameera Almeron, plus Kim Aubry, Shirley Thompson, Steven Okazaki, Laurie Coyle, Ed Rudolph, Arwen Curry, Kim Salyer, Nancy Kates, Bill Webber, Sharon Wood, Andy Black, Jill Shiraki, and others.

You don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate this incisive and surprising film. It wears its deep history chops lightly and keeps the spirit of sport in the foreground with lots of affection.