Abe Isoo and His 1905 US Baseball Tour: Japan’s First Overseas School Excursion for a Sporting Competition

Abstract

On 4 April 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, Abe Isoo (1865–1949), the father of baseball in Japan, Christian intellectual, and professor of economics and political science at Waseda University, took his baseball players to the USA to play against American students and local players in California. Amidst the war and growing anti-Japanese sentiment in California, Abe realized his decade-long dream of participating in international athletic competitions in anticipation of such games contributing to the resolution of international conflicts without weapons. His two primary goals were that his students would experience “systematic scientific” baseball on its home soil and that they would broaden their international perspective. The tour marked the first school excursion sent from Japan for an overseas sporting event and also initiated Japan into the arena of international sporting competitions. This paper focuses on Abe’s view of physical education as seen in his 1905 US tour (4 April–29 June 1905).