Double binding of Japanese colonialism: trajectories of baseball in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea^†

† Earlier versions of the paper were presented at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) in March 2010, Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore (Singapore) in March 2010 and Asian Cultural and Media Studies Research Cluster at Monash University (Australia) in November 2013.

ABSTRACT

This study explores the historic implications of baseball within the larger processes of constructing modernity under Japanese colonialism by examining the game's regional trajectory, with a focus on its introduction and proliferation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although baseball was initially introduced into the region as a symbol of American modernity, it was spread and popularized by Imperial Japan. By examining the ways that baseball was received and appropriated in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, this study demonstrates that its trajectory reflects not only colonization by both the USA and Japan but resistance that amounted to a double de-colonization against both of these entities. The term ‘double binding’ is heuristically used to illustrate both Japanese imperialism and postcolonial consciousness in its (former) colonies, in which the USA and Japan functioned as a pair of modernizing/imperial forces and as the objects of de-colonization.

KEYWORDS:

• Japanese imperialism
• colonial modernity
• East Asia
• modern sport
• baseball
• postcolonialism

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank for all the responses from the participants of the events, as well as from two reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Dr Younghan Cho is an associate professor in Korean Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include media and cultural studies, global sports and nationalism, and East Asian pop culture and modernity, and cultural economy in Korean and Asian contexts. Dr Cho has co-edited several special issues, incuding ‘Colonial Modernity and Beyond: East Asian Contexts’ in Cultural Studies, ‘American Pop culture’ in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and ‘Glocalization of Sports in Asia’ in Sociology of Sport Journal. He edited two books, entitled Football in Asia: History, Culture and Business, and Modern Sports in Asia (Routledge, 2014).

Notes

† Earlier versions of the paper were presented at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) in March 2010, Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore (Singapore) in March 2010 and Asian Cultural and Media Studies Research Cluster at Monash University (Australia) in November 2013.

1. To explain the modernization of sports, similarly, Elias used the term ‘sportisation’ ‘to refer to a process in the course of which the rules of sports came more and more to be written down, nationally (subsequently internationally) standardized, more explicit, more precise, oriented around an ethos of “fair play”' (Dunning, 2002, p. 220).

2. For its contributions, the Waseda teams were regarded as ‘revolutionaries of the scientific baseball in Japan' (Tobita, 1925, p. 60). For obtaining materials in Japanese, I received the assistance of Tooyama Aya, and the librarians of the Baseball Museum in Tokyo.

3. After the games, a foreigner with white mustaches told Japanese players that he was very impressed by the game because Japanese players really learned his national game well, baseball (Kouryoushi, 1930, p. 802).

4. An original article was retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/Nagoya.Japan.Taiwan.Friendship. Accessed on 1 May 2015.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.