Japanese Baseball Research Articles

Balancing the Traveling Tournament Problem for Weekday and Weekend Games

The Traveling Tournament Problem (TTP) is a well-known NP-complete problem in sports scheduling that was inspired by the application of optimizing schedules for Major League Baseball to reduce total team travel. The techniques and heuristics from the n-team TTP can be extended to optimize the scheduling of other sports leagues, such as the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league in Japan. In this paper, we describe the additional scheduling constraints required by the NPB league, such as the requirement that each team play the same number of weekend home games, weekday home games, weekend road games, and weekday road games. We fully solve this TTP-variant for the case n = 6, and conclude the paper by presenting the official 2013 NPB Central League Schedule, where we helped this Japanese baseball league reduce total team travel by over six thousand kilometres.

Human face structure correlates with professional baseball performance: insights from professional Japanese baseball players

In our daily lives, we use faces as a major source of information about other people. Recent work has begun to highlight how one's facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is linked to a number of behaviours (e.g. deception, aggression and financial performance in firms). fWHR has also been linked to several factors that may be beneficial for sport (e.g. achievement drive, winning mentality and aggression). Despite this, few studies have examined the relationship between fWHR and sports performance, and these have focused on Caucasian sportsmen. Here, we investigated the relationship between fWHR and baseball performance in professional Japanese baseball players. We show that fWHR is positively related with home run performance across two consecutive seasons. The findings provide the first evidence linking fWHR to baseball performance and linking fWHR to behavioural outcomes in Asian participants.

Dust Resulting from Tire Wear and the Risk of Health Hazards

The present study examined the effects of air pollutants on people’s health, focusing on dust produced from automobile tires while cars drive on roads. The annual volume of dust resulting from tire wear, calculated based on the number of automobiles registered in Japan, was 1747245.4 m3. To put it simply, this translates to approximately 1.4 times the volume of the Tokyo Dome, a famous Japanese baseball stadium. Particulate substances are categorized into three groups depending on their size, and dust resulting from tire wear is classified into the coarse particle mode along with mold spores, pollen, and dust produced from brake pads. This study examined whether or not tire dust causes health damage similarly to pollen, a particulate substance in the same group. There were 38/cm2 dust particles resulting from tire wear on a busy road in Osaka Prefecture, and this number was larger than that of cedar pollen/cm2 (35), a cause of hay fever, identified in Hokkaido. The results suggest that tire dust may also adversely affect the health of people if any of its constituents has a toxicity or causes allergies.

Globalisation, Individualism and Scandal: New Directions in Japanese Baseball

When Hideo Nomo exploited a contractual loophole to transfer from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) to Major League Baseball in 1994, he provided the catalyst for change in the relationship between individual players and teams in Japan's number one sport. Nomo's ‘defection’ changed player/team attitudes as emphasis shifted from one of mutual trust to one based heavily on contracts. The Japanese version of sportsmanship until that point had been one that relied on the loyalty of players to a paternal and protective owner. The mutual trust established through a combination of loyalty and obligation was not unique to baseball, rather it should be seen as a reflection of many aspects of Japanese culture. By the turn of the century, baseball in Japan has changed greatly and this is especially so for not only labour relations in NPB but also High School Baseball. In 2007, it was revealed that 7921 high school players had been given illegal financial assistance causing a scandal that had repercussions throughout Japanese society. This paper investigates the implications of this change, particularly on NPB. The analysis extends to consider the broader effects this event had on baseball, especially within the Japanese education system.

Impact of Japanese Professional Baseball Fans' Satisfaction on Sports Participation Behavior

We investigated the impact of professional baseball fans' satisfaction on sporting event participation behavior. The use of service experience as a moderator allows for the understanding of changes in the relationship between satisfaction and sporting event participation, thus providing a basis of reference for professional baseball management in the Asia region. In this study we distributed questionnaires to 417 Japanese professional baseball fans and used structural equation modeling to perform model analysis. The results of this study establish that experience with service content directly impacts fan satisfaction and sporting event participation. However, satisfaction did not exhibit a significant direct impact on sporting event participation behavior. Service experience was, therefore, a moderator.

Labor Markets and National Culture: Salary Determination in Japanese Baseball

We analyze the determinants of salaries for players in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) using performance data from 2004 to 2006 and compensation data from 2005 to 2007. We find that salaries in NPB are determined by different factors than those that drive salaries in Major League Baseball (MLB). We also find that experience plays a significant role in salary determination, which suggests that the Japanese emphasis on seniority still holds in NPB. Finally, we show that free agency has relatively little impact on salaries in NPB, which suggests that players in NPB are subject to greater monopsony power than players in MLB.

A multi-round generalization of the traveling tournament problem and its application to Japanese baseball

In a double round-robin tournament involving n teams, every team plays 2( n − 1) games, with one home game and one away game against each of the other n − 1 teams. Given a symmetric n by n matrix representing the distances between each pair of home cities, the traveling tournament problem (TTP) seeks to construct an optimal schedule that minimizes the sum total of distances traveled by the n teams as they move from city to city, subject to several natural constraints to ensure balance and fairness. In the TTP, the number of rounds is set at r = 2. In this paper, we generalize the TTP to multiple rounds ( r = 2 k, for any k ⩾ 1) and present an algorithm that converts the problem to finding the shortest path in a directed graph, enabling us to apply Dijkstra’s Algorithm to generate the optimal multi-round schedule. We apply our shortest-path algorithm to optimize the league schedules for Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) in Japan, where two leagues of n = 6 teams play 40 sets of three intra-league games over r = 8 rounds. Our optimal schedules for the Pacific and Central Leagues achieve a 25% reduction in total traveling distance compared to the 2010 NPB schedule, implying the potential for considerable savings in terms of time, money, and greenhouse gas emissions.

A Sustainable Business Model of Minor League Baseball in Japan Based on a Comparison of the US and Japanese Baseball Businesses

A Sustainable Business Model of Minor League Baseball in Japan Based on a Comparison of the US and Japanese Baseball Businesses

C20 統一球と日米硬式野球ボールの空力特性(空力特性II)

C20 統一球と日米硬式野球ボールの空力特性(空力特性II)

Game Information, Local Heroes, and Their Effect on Attendance: The Case of the Japanese Baseball League

In the Japanese Professional Baseball League (JPBL), the starting pitcher is announced prior to the game in the Pacific League (PL) but not in the Central League (CL). The author attempts to investigate how the release of information concerning a starting pitcher prior to the game affects attendance. The author’s major findings are (a) In the PL, the salary (and overall number of wins) of the home team’s starting pitcher is positively related to attendance, while that of the visiting team is not. (b) In the CL, neither the salary (or the overall number of wins) of the home team’s starting pitcher nor that of the visiting team affect attendance.

Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball (review)

Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball (review)

The Creation of Professional Sports Leagues in Japan: A Cultural History of Human Networks

In this paper, the author researches the origins of Japanese baseball culture from the viewpoint of human social networks – focusing on Ichizo Kobayashi and Matsutaro Shoriki – that were used in order to establish and to build the financial support for Japan's first baseball organizations. The establishment of the pre-war professional baseball league in Japan was closely related to city planning strategies that took advantage of developing industries, such as railways, department stores and newspapers. The key persons associated with those strategies, Kobayashi and Shoriki, attracted people to baseball, by planning and implementing various events that stimulated public interest. A look at their life histories and networks of social contacts reveals that Japan's professional baseball league was established by virtue of their personal and professional connections which extended across economic, political and governmental circles. A brief assessment of the parallel development of professional football in Japan, the J-League, will also be addressed.

Playing baseball/playing ‘house’: the reproduction and naturalization of ‘separate spheres’ in Japanese high school baseball

Although Japanese schools are generally considered to be one of the most gender-equitable social institutions in Japan, they play an important role in helping to reproduce and naturalize the notion of sex-based separate spheres, through endorsing the maintenance of such separate spheres in extracurricular sports clubs, such as baseball, where female student ‘managers’ act as surrogate mothers to the male team members: cooking, cleaning and engaging in other support work. Furthermore, the Japan High School Baseball Federation (JHBF)'s rule prohibiting female teammates from participating in official games (due to the ‘danger’ of injury to smaller, weaker females) discourages more athletically capable females from joining baseball teams in the first place, so that female students who do join high school baseball teams as players tend to be less likely to be athletically competitive. This both reinforces the image of smaller, weaker females and justifies the JHBF's policy, further strengthening the notion of the appropriateness of separate spheres. Moreover, the mass media encourage this, both by applauding the efforts of the female managers, and by giving details on the physiques of female teammates, thus subtly supporting the argument that females cannot and should not compete with males in baseball (or, by implication, in other male-dominated fields). Thus, these practices help to normalize the idea of sex-based separate spheres at a very real experiential level for high school students, as well as at a symbolic/ideological level for society as a whole.

A8 日米の硬式野球ボールの形状比較について(空力特性II)

A8 日米の硬式野球ボールの形状比較について(空力特性II)

Designated Hitter Rule Debate: A Search for Mr. Hyde in Pitchers

This article investigates the effect of baseball’s designated hitter rule on the number of hit batsmen, with a focus on individual pitchers. Researchers have debated the rule’s incentives for pitchers and its impact on hit batsmen based on aggregate and cross-section statistics: They treat pitchers as a group. This article argues that individual pitchers are concerned with their reputation in the baseball community, and that they do not necessarily respond to the rule change by throwing at batters. Analyses of performance data of individual pitchers in a Japanese baseball league indicate that the rule did not prompt their behavioral change.

Wally Yonamine: the man who changed Japanese baseball

Wally Yonamine was both the first Japanese American to play for an NFL franchise and the first American to play professional baseball in Japan after World War II. This is the unlikely story of how a shy young man from the sugar plantations of Maui overcame prejudice to integrate two professional sports in two countries. In 1951 the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants chose Yonamine as the first American to play in Japan during the Allied occupation. He entered Japanese baseball when mistrust of Americans was high-and higher still for Japanese Americans whose parents had left the country a generation earlier. Without speaking the language, he helped introduce a hustling style of base running, shaking up the game for both Japanese players and fans. Along the way, Yonamine endured insults, dodged rocks thrown by fans, initiated riots, and was threatened by yakuza (the Japanese mafia). He also won batting titles, was named the 1957 MVP, coached and managed for twenty-five years, and was honored by the emperor of Japan. Overcoming bigotry and hardship on and off the field, Yonamine became a true national hero and a member of Japan's Baseball Hall of Fame. In addition to the foreword by Hawaiian senator Daniel K. Inouye, this Nebraska Paperback edition features a new preface by the author, commemorating Yonamine at his death in early 2011.

Samurai Baseball: The Vicissitudes of a National Sporting Style

The conventional view of Japan's national pastime, baseball, is that it is a sport misshapen from an original exuberant American game by a Japanese national propensity to slavish loyalty and uncritical adherence to form. This substantially misrepresents the trajectory of baseball in Japan by substituting an illusory appeal to national character stereotypes for a serious historical sociology of sport. Abe and Mangan, among others, have already uncovered the complex influences of British athleticism and sportsmanship on early Japanese sport philosophies. This article depicts the subsequent history of Japanese baseball as a complex interplay of nationalized sporting style, educational pedagogy, urban entertainment, media creation, local identity and the realities of sports practices.

Chinese Culture Examined through Linguistics and Research Based on Numerals

Language and culture are closely related to each other. One form of language and culture is symbolic codes. Culture is the language of the world. Within each household there is a history of mutual relationships between parent and child. Culture is not necessarily an expression of language and cannot easily be described. Other forms of cultural expression include dance, music, painting, sculpture and architecture. Language exists in the form of culture and is also a nation's accumulated wisdom. The language of people over long periods of time also contributes towards the aforementioned activities. In other words, culture is an important part of a nation. Language is the treasury of wisdom and the spiritual wealth of a nation. The ancient Chinese view numbers with great importance. Japanese baseball players place a lot of emphasis on their jersey numbers. For example, is the number worn by Nagashima, a baseball player. The No. 3 is considered a magic charm and supporters can feel the power of Nagashima by wearing this number on their clothes. Sadaharu Oh wears a jersey with the printed on the back and when baseball fans wear a similar jersey with No. 1 they say it reminds them of their hero. The numbers 1.3.5.7 are considered by the Japanese to be numbers used when offering condolences in the form of money, bags or even the packaging used to wrap money. The numbers 2.4.6.8 are the preferred numbers for the Chinese. These numbers represent the numbers used in gold ceremonial occasions. Every country has a different history and as a result different cultural traditions have developed.

Motives of United States and Japanese professional baseball consumers and level of team identification

Consumer motives and level of identification with professional baseball teams in the United States and Japan were measured and compared. Significant differences were found on nine of the ten motives measured. Entertainment and motives associated with the core product (game aesthetics, players' skills, and the drama of games) were rated the highest by consumers in the United States. Entertainment and the opportunity to enjoy games with family and friends were rated highest by Japanese consumers. A significant difference was found relative to team identification; the highest percentage of Japanese baseball consumers had low team identification, while the largest percentage of United States baseball consumers reported high levels of team identification. Sport organisations seeking to reach a global audience are advised to better understand the motives influencing consumption of a sport product across cultures, and the degree to which a consumer may identify with a particular product.

Bushido Baseball? Three 'Fathers' and the Invention of a Tradition

Japanese baseball is often presented as an example of an unchanging Japanese ‘national character’, and Japanese baseball players are depicted as contemporary versions of the samurai, living and playing baseball according to a code of ‘yakyūdō’ (‘the way of baseball’, thought to be a present-day incarnation of bushidō, ‘the way of the warrior’) by both Japanese and non-Japanese commentators alike. In this paper, however, I argue that rather than Japanese baseball's ideology and practices being reflective of a unique and unchanging ‘essence’ of Japan, they are the result of specific individuals and institutions interacting under particular historical and social forces. Moreover, although the dominant ideology in Japanese baseball has been couched in the rhetoric of bushidō for over 100 years, it is in fact closer to 19th-century Western notions of amateurism, sportsmanship and chivalrous masculinity than the ethos of samurai of earlier centuries. This is largely due to the efforts of Christian socialist Abe Isō, considered to be both the ‘father of Japanese socialism’ and the ‘father of Japanese baseball’, as well as his students Tobita Suishu and Saeki Tatsuo, known as the ‘father of student baseball’ and the ‘father of high school baseball’, respectively.