TOKYO — Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he’s much more than that in Japan.
Back home, he’s a wellspring of national pride, much like Shohei Ohtani now. His triumphs across the Pacific buoyed the nation as Japan’s economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades of the 1990s and into the 2000s.
“He healed the wounds in Japan’s national psyche,” Kiyoteru Tsutsui, professor of sociology at Stanford University, told The Associated Press.
He’s expected to be the first Japanese player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and possibly only the second player chosen unanimously after New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.
Ichiro debuted in Major League Baseball in 2001 with the Seattle Mariners, the first Japanese position player to span the Pacific and an instant star. Left-handed pitcher Hideo Nomo preceded him, and Hideki Matsui came just after, both boosting the country’s confidence in a period of national malaise.
Tsutsui termed Ichiro a “great cultural export,” akin to Hello Kitty, sushi, manga and others creations from Japan.
“It may not be an exaggeration to say that Ichiro represents Japan’s transition from the faceless economic animal to a producer of global cultural icons,” Tsutsui said.
There was something in Ichiro for every ‘yakyu’ fan
Ichiro started playing baseball at age 7 on a Little League team near Nagoya in central Japan. Sure, baseball is baseball, but the culture around the game — known as “yakyu” (field ball) — is special.
He was driven by his father, Nobuyuki Suzuki, and came up through what is often described as a regimented baseball-training system that some link to the martial arts and even samurai history.
Ichiro grew to be hip in the majors, which fit the nation’s branding as “Cool Japan.” On the way, he bumped into pressure in Japan to conform, expressed in the saying “deru kugi wa utareru.”
Roughly in English: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
“Young people flocked to watch him because they saw his do-it-my-way rebel spirit,” William Kelly, emeritus professor of Japanese studies at Yale University, wrote in an email. “Old fans were drawn to his seriousness of purpose and his force of concentration.’
Ichiro developed his unique swing very early, lifting his right leg and almost running to first base before hitting the ball. Repeatedly told in Japan to change it, he declined.
His given name Ichiro — ’ichi” means “one” in Japanese — started appearing on the back of his jersey in 1994 with the Orix BlueWave. Suzuki is a very common family name, and manager Akira Ohgi wanted to single out Ichiro for attention.
“I see Ichiro as an artist, a craftsman,” said Shimpei Miyagawa, an assistant professor at Temple University in Japan. “The point is that Ichiro is someone who stands out in both singular talent and longevity in a game that is ironically played as a team sport.”
A Japanese, Miyagawa taught high school in Massachusetts and recalls students wearing Ichiro jerseys — in the heart of Boston Red Sox country.
“To me that speaks volumes about the cultural breakthrough,” Miyagawa said.
Ichiro was must-see television in Japan
Ichiro’s games were shown live and on tape when be began playing with the Mariners.
Nomo had a similar effect when he debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995. Ichiro topped that interest level, wrote Robert Whiting in his book “The Samurai Way of Baseball.”
“Ichiro was the first to appear front and center ever single day — a slender Japanese among pumped up musclemen, sparking big American teammates to victory — and the public could simply not get enough of this delectable sight,” he wrote.
Whiting wrote that few Japanese had seen much of Ichiro when he played in Japan for the BlueWave in the western city of Kobe.
“His face adorned billboards all over Japan. Yet he nearly always played to half-empty stands, in games that were almost never telecast nationally.”
Ichiro will go into the Hall of Fame as professional baseball’s all-time leader in hits with 4,367 (3,089 in MLB and 1,278 in Japan) — more even than Pete Rose’s 4,256. He broke George Sisler’s single-season hits mark of 257 in 2004. The new mark is 262.
He played his last two games in 2019 in the Tokyo Dome against the Athletics, going 0 for 5 for the Mariners and then retiring at 45.
“I really wanted to play until I was 50,” he said after his final game. “But I couldn’t do it. But it was a way of motivating myself. If I had never said that, I don’t think I would have come this far.”
Now 51 years old, Ichiro is still going strong
Ichiro made global news just over a year ago when he broke a window with a 426-foot home run while teaching students batting techniques at a Japanese high school.
Much of Ichiro’s early life is documented in the modest Ichiro Exhibition Room in his hometown of Toyoyama. It’s situated in a residential area, a four-story, inconspicuous building; a shrine filled with Ichiro memorabilia.
It’s only open on the weekends and it’s sure to become popular as this summer’s Cooperstown induction nears. A marker guiding tourists to the office is graced with a silhouette of left-handed hitting Ichiro — his right leg raised as he begins his swing.
Ichiro’s Cooperstown call comes amid a surge of Japanese talent
Baseball was introduced into schools in Japan in 1872 by an American teacher, and many have used it to gauge the country’s march toward modernization after centuries of isolation from the West.
Ichiro’s Hall of Fame enshrinement coincides with a surge of Japanese players shining in MLB. Ohtani is a singular talent in the history of the sport, and he was one of a dozen Japanese exports in the majors last season, including Yu Darvish, Shota Imanaga and $325 million Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
“Ichiro and Ohtani command so much respect from their peers and the public alike because they are focused on honing their crafts,” Tsutsui wrote.
Phenom pitcher Roki Sasaki, who announced he’s leaving Japan to join Ohtani on the Dodgers, continues the evolution.
“The Hall of Fame vote caps that process,” Tsutsui added. “And many Japanese embrace the recognition that he is one of the greatest players to ever play in the Majors.”
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