The Meaning of Ichiro (14 page)

In the pros, standard operating procedure for the two pennant winners came to be spending a week before the Japan Series sequestered
in hotels away from their families, devoting every waking hour to practice and study of the opposition.

Cracked the iconoclastic sportswriter Masayuki Tamaki, “Japan should replace the Japan Series with a ‘practice tournament’
to see who can practice the most.”

And not a few have pointed out the toll that such zealousness takes. Said Leon Lee, father of major leaguer Derrek Lee and
a man who played, coached and managed in Japan for years, “Japanese players are in terrific shape in April, but they wear
themselves out and run out of gas by midseason.”

But, despite such criticisms, the answer to running out of gas by and large remained—what else?—more practice. Under manager
Shigeo Nagashima, for example, the Yomiuri Giants held a seven-hour-a-day postseason autumn “Hell Camp” on Izu peninsula in
1997—a time when most major leaguers were relaxing on the golf course. Lasting the entire month of November, it required every
pitcher to run 10 kilometers a day and every batter to take 1,000 swings; more than one player collapsed on the field before
he finished. Nagashima, dissatisfied with the team’s fifth-place finish that season, had declared at the outset that he fully
expected such dire consequences to occur and had presciently ordered an ambulance to be at the ready.

“Bashing the players this way cultivates spirit,” said Nagashima, a man not averse to slapping younger players. “It will help
them grow as human beings.”

There were a lot of players who scoffed at the term “fighting spirit,” including a member of that Izu camp, a star pitcher
named Suguru Egawa who had run his 10K a day there. Said Egawa, “I hate the word
konj
.”
But there were also a lot of players who went along, among them a slugger named Hideki Matsui. Ichiro Suzuki was heard to
comment that such rigors are “an extremely valuable thing.”

When one added to this certain practical considerations like the need to perfect one’s form or
kata
(another legacy of the martial arts), it was not difficult to understand why this practice of endless training remained alive
and well in Japan. Many starting pitchers, for example, throw hard on the sidelines nearly every day, in contrast to Americans
who rest three or four days between starts. In camp, they’d do even more.

Said Jim Colborn of his Japan experience, “I tried to tell my pitchers it wasn’t necessary to throw 1,000 pitches in three
days in camp, about 10 times what the Americans did, or throw 100 pitches the day before a start. I tried to tell them that
they would wind up hurting their arms. But they wouldn’t listen. They had too many different pitches to master, they said,
like the fastball, the curve, the
shooto,
the slider and the forkball, which was one reason why they had such heavy throwing regimens in the first place. Americans
could get by on speed and the changeup, they would admit, but Japanese, who could not throw as hard, needed the variety to
succeed. But on top of that, I also found that there was a physical and psychological need for them to do it. Mastering proper
form was how they grounded themselves as players.”

The term
wa
(group harmony), some Japanese will tell you, is one of the most fundamental concepts of Japan’s moral system. It arose,
some say, out of Japan’s agricultural past when cooperation between farmers was imperative in order to maintain the irrigation
systems necessary to grow rice and other crops. Since Japan was a mountainous island country with few natural resources and
little available land for farming and living, people had to work together to survive. In the seventh century, when Prince
Shotoku Taishi issued Japan’s first constitution, he decreed in Article 1 that
wa
was to occupy a premier place in the value system, stressing the word several times in that document.

The spirit of
wa
was pursued over the centuries with fluctuating degrees of enthusiasm, and success, from the halcyon peace of the Heian Era
to the bloody internal wars of the 16th century. It was tempered through a millennium of Buddhism, Confucianism and feudalism
(where behavior was dictated right down to the food a person could eat and the clothing he could wear).

Although feudal rule was abolished with the advent of the Meiji Era, the emphasis on the unity of the group remained central
to the Japanese way of thinking, influenced by lingering feudal family and apprenticeship systems which had made the sense
of belonging to a group important. After the Second World War and the establishment of a new democratic constitution, the
concept and pursuit of individual rights was not always paramount as the nation went about the task of rebuilding the war-shattered
economy with renewed
konj
.
Every aspect of the corporate culture was infused with
wa
—from consenus-based decision-making to promotions and even to elevator etiquette. The emphasis on loyalty, cooperation and
trust was cited in many circles as a main reason for Japan’s eventual success on the world economic stage.

Thus, company employees and government workers respected their seniors and worked long hours uncomplainingly, including a
substantial amount of
“s
bisu sangy
”
(unpaid overtime). Industry saw merit in continuation and seniority, not individual flash. The old cliché “The nail that sticks
up gets hammered down” was elevated to the status of a national slogan. With all this came Japan’s image as “the world capital
of consensus-oriented groupthink,” as one writer put it.

Enhancing this view was the absence of lengthy worker strikes, a low crime rate, well-mannered passengers on impossibly packed
commuter trains—and fans in sports stadiums who were models of restraint and courtesy, careful not to shout out of turn in
consideration for the fans sitting next to them. It all reflected what Japan sage Donald Richie described as the general “Japanese
ability to put up with things, to conciliate.”

The socially accepted escape valves were well known, like those famous after-hours drinking sessions with colleagues for the
salarymen, (which was why commuter train stations not infrequently smelled of vomit late at night—overworked baseball players
were not the only ones puking their guts out for the greater glory of the team). But as author Sebastian Moffet put it, “More
than most other societies, appropriate behavior in Japan depended on place and occasion and the Japanese could switch their
inhibitions on or off accordingly.” For sports fans, it was only when they joined the highly organized
endan
or cheerleading groups that they could really let loose.

The Japanese postwar school system helped prepare students to take their place in such a society. In contrast to the American
system, where students were encouraged to cultivate that which made them different from others, Japanese students were taught
to focus on finding common denominators. Instead of being urged to think for themselves and express their opinions as part
of the democratic process, Japanese were taught to guard their opinions and submerge their interests into those of the group.
Individuals, like those annoying Americans, who pressed their thoughts on others, even their elders, were considered likely
to disrupt harmony and therefore looked at askance.

Sports reporter Kozo Abe, who covered baseball in the United States for three years in between stints of reporting on his
country’s own game, came to this conclusion about the essential differences between the two cultures. “Japanese players talk
much less than Americans,” he said. “Americans expect people to voice their own opinions and express themselves freely. MLB
players are always spouting off to the press. But in Japan, it’s the opposite. You have to rein in your feelings to maintain
harmony. At the same time, it’s also a way to keep from having to form an opinion or putting yourself on the spot.”

Wa
was reflected in
yaky
in other ways, like uniform playing styles, a mostly conciliatory players’ union and the paucity of player agents and heated
salary disputes, which was why players’ salaries were typically one-fifth to one-sixth of those of their North American counterparts.