All is not what it seems, people. Baseball is still king in Japan and Ichiro Suzuki is still the game's king in that country. In fact, when it comes to international renown the only Asian athlete Ichiro takes a back seat to is China's Yao Ming, and that is largely because basketball is bigger globally than baseball.
I mention all this because much has been made of soccer's renaissance in Japan while much has also been made of talented young pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka's high-profile US$100 million pilgrimage from Japan to the Boston Red Sox this year. This past week, however, both baseball and Ichiro reasserted themselves on the national psyche.
In the US, baseball was once the national pastime. But that was many, many moons ago. Major League Baseball is now a distant fourth on the national sporting radar behind the NFL, Nascar and the NBA. In Japan, there is no such quandary. For the past 100 years, this American import has been a national obsession. While soccer has been making strides, it still lacks a transcendent presence abroad.
As anyone who was at the Reunification Cup in Hong Kong a few weeks ago can tell you, soccer pin-up Hidetoshi Nakata is still wildly popular with the Japanese. Nakata, however, is more pop star than sporting star. He was once a very good player. But despite playing close to a decade in Europe, he has never spent a moment when he was one of the 10 best players in the world.
And although Japan set out to defend their back-to-back titles at the Asian Cup this week, much of the country is indifferent to their quest. The World Cup is a different matter, naturally. But it doesn't appear Japan will be winning that grandiose championship any time soon.
In baseball, Japan captured the imagination of the country last year by winning the inaugural World Baseball Classic, an event that is trying to position itself as the World Cup of baseball. It was a victory that seemed to reignite the country's passion for the game. But while Japan's domestic baseball league has taken a dip in popularity recently, a large part of the reason is because the country's best players are now playing in the major leagues. So if millions in Japan are waking up early to watch baseball games from the US, instead of indulging in the domestic fare, it still stands to reason that this is a baseball country.