An Invitation to See the Hanshin Tigers: Japanese Baseball as Seen Through the Eyes of a Female Fan

I was studying Japanese grammar one afternoon on a bench outside Osaka's Ryokuchi Koen Youth Hostel when Fujiko Tanaka invited me to join her for green tea. Wiry and springy with radiant, beady eyes and a ponytail that bobbed when she spoke, she looked sixteen years old but was twenty-three, a pharmaceutical graduate student by night and youth hostel desk clerk by day. She struck me as an independent spirit in a culture where tradition still tightly proscribes male-female roles. Alongside male coworkers she was meek, nodding as they spoke and silent during group banter. She batted her eyelashes and spoke in a dumbstruck manner. However, around foreign guests she was self-assured, ruminative, inquisitive, respectful, and funny.

I had chatted with Fujiko many times about politics and travel, particularly her interest in studying herbal medicine in China. But I was surprised on this afternoon to learn of her enthusiasm for baseball.

"I have not gone to see the Hanshin Tigers play this year," she said as she poured me tea. "Usually I go with my younger sister but this year we've been busy with school. I would like to see a game, although they are in last place. They are . . . bara bara." She thumbed her Japanese-English dictionary for a translation. " 'Scattered, fractured,"' she read. "Their manager is lackadaisical so they don't play like a team. They play just to improve their individual statistics."

"Did you grow up a Hanshin fan?"

"Yes, Gordon-san! I used to ride my bicycle to Koshien Stadium [where Hanshin plays] to wish my favorite player, Kakefu, encouragement when he arrived at the stadium. He wasn't drafted. He was a walk-on who worked hard. I used to turn my bedroom television set silent when he batted, and I thought I heard the crowd rooting for him. Maybe I just heard the expressway? Now I no longer watch the games because of my schedule."

Charmed by Fujiko's history with the Tigers, I invited her to a Hanshin home game and she enthusiastically accepted. At the game a few days later she sat attentive and reverent, her face radiating calm, her cheeks flush, leaning toward me occasionally to point out something. She had draped her dark blue windbreaker over her lap. Occasionally, when she swiped strands of hair from her eyes, I noted she was profoundly beautiful.

Fujiko closely watched the game, periodically filling me in about the Tigers. A few years ago a player named Mayumi was very popular, she said. Fans celebrated his plate appearances by dancing to the "Mickey Mouse March." The song and dance had no special meaning, but became tradition. She told me that the Tigers had a disadvantage in the league because they had to spend two consecutive weeks on the road when the ballpark hosted the national high school championship tournament. (See NINE vol. 4 no. 2, p p. 334-44). It often resulted in the team "losing heart." She said special gardeners grew the ivy covering the outside walls of the stadiums. I asked whether she felt attached to Koshien Stadium.

"I like all diamonds," she said dreamily. "I think someone wise designed the baseball diamond. Maybe more people go to see ball games than go to see the fall foliage in Kyoto and tour Kinkaku-ji Temple. Have you heard of it? It has a gold-foiled exterior that reflects in Kyoko Pond.

"There's one trail near my house which leads to the summit of Mt. Rokko. People take it for the view. I think people are similarly attracted to a baseball diamond .My guess is there are dimensions that humans find comfortable and the ballpark contains such dimensions."

Shifting excitedly and pulling back her hair, she shared that she had studied architecture as an undergraduate, and two important architectural principles are geometrical patterns and regulating lines.

Regulating lines are not always visible, but they form patterns that give something comprehensible order. I think the diamond has comprehensible order. And there's a Golden...