Overdose of cultural steroid is undermining quality of our life
From left: Sadaharu Oh, Hideo Nomo, Shizuka Arakawa, Junichiro Koizumi with Arakawa
Traditionally the Japanese people have been abusing two types of cultural steroid - morbid commercialism and odd nationalism - interchangeably as performance-enhancers. But the situation with their addiction to these substances now looks to be undergoing a certain change as cross-boarder interchange increasingly flourishes, especially in sports such as baseball and soccer. Today they are aware that just commercializing sports won't be effective enough for Japanese athletes to compete on par with their foreign counterparts.
I have nothing against commercialism as such because there is no such thing as a market economy without it. But I think Japan's commercialism, typically represented by the Yomiuri media empire, is incurably sick because there is no principle of competition at work there.
One illustrative case of the sick commercialism is the dominance of the Yomiuri Giants over Japan's puro yakyu (professional baseball). The owner of the Giants is the Yomiuri Shimbun, the flagship daily of the Yomiuri media group. It's a natural thing that the Yomiuri Shimbun, its affiliate sports daily Hochi Shimbun, and NTV are promoting the ballclub (Japan's New York Yankees only in terms of standings in total payroll) while giving much less coverage to other 11 teams, no matter whether the Giants are at the top, or at the bottom, of the Central League's standings. But you have difficulty understanding how come other media organizations with nationwide network and circulation, such as Asahi, Sankei and Mainichi, do exactly the same. As Marty Kuehnert, former sports commentator and current General Manager of the Rakuten Eagles, once wrote, the root cause undermining Japan's puro yakyu lies with the fact that it's always revolving around the Yomiuri Giants.
Incidentally, the 1-plus-year-old Eagles are the latest addition to the Pacific League. But the early indications are that the ballclub will be doomed to remain a cellar dweller in the next 5 to 10 years just because it will take a lot of time for the new entrant to become fully assimilated in the cartel called puro yakyu.
Another distinctive thing about Japan's pro baseball is the never-ending craze for the nation's darling Shigeo Nagashima, former third baseman (1957-74) and skipper (1975-80 and 1992-2001) of the Yomiuri Giants. His stats are not really impressive with a career average of .305, 444 homeruns and 1,522 RBIs. And yet Matsutaro Shoriki, then-owner of the Tokyo ballclub, handpicked Nagashima as the one to represent the entire puro yakyu and remain forever on the throne, when he decided to resign as the field manager. That's why he was named "Lifetime Honorary Manager" of the ballclub in 2001. To him playing in the U.S. was out of the question because he was just smart enough to avoid ending up a mediocre major leaguer.
Obviously the primary factor in the Shoriki's pick of the mediocre person was that Nagashima was considered an extremely likable personality and a "telegenic" figure. From a phrenological point of view (I'm a believer in Abraham Lincoln's physiognomy, to be more precise), he is not my type. But just the same, in his prime Nagashima was, and still remain, something more than a national hero. He was/is very close to the Emperor. Since the days when the Japanese economy was going through a double-digit growth year after year, he has served as the symbol of national unity. Every business meeting used to start with a preliminary chat over his performance the night before. We thought that by doing so, a business deal could be expedited most effectively. · read more (1,678 words)