Stepping Up to the Plate: How One Man’s Vision and an Emperor’s Whisper Transformed Baseball into Japan’s National Pastime
Akira Hiroo’s Consideration of Baseball Business Model
Series: Akira Hiroo’s Consideration of Baseball Business Models (Part 3)
Published on September 9, 2024 (Monday) by Akira Hiroo
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Matsutaro Shoriki was the first owner of the Yomiuri Giants and the “father of professional baseball.” After working as a police bureaucrat, he went on to serve as president of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, chairman of Nippon Television Network, a member of the House of Representatives, director-general of the Hokkaido Regional Development Agency, a minister of state, first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, first director-general of the Science and Technology Agency, and chairman of the National Public Safety Commission. He was photographed during his term as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1956 (photo: Kyodo News).
Shoriki Matsutaro, the Police Bureaucrat Turned Owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun
Baseball developed in Japan as an amateur sport. It wasn’t until 1936, 64 years after the introduction of baseball, that a professional baseball league was formed.
However, in the United States, baseball developed as a “professional sport” from the very beginning. College and high school baseball was established later than the professional level.
The “Leach All-American” in 1908, the “Giants and White Sox” in 1913, the “All-American National” in 1920, etc. It can be said that Japanese baseball “evolved” every time a selected team came from the United States in “Japan-US Baseball”. All of these teams were “professional baseball teams”. Many of the players were minor leaguers, but they not only played but also taught baseball techniques to Japanese players.
In other words, Japanese baseball learned baseball knowledge and techniques from American professional baseball, but its organizational operations and management evolved as a “hybrid” of Japanese-style ”amateurism.”
In the 1920s, as Babe Ruth of the Yankees began breaking home run records one after another, MLB transformed from a “blue-collar sport” to a “national pastime.”
This information was also spread to Japan, where a baseball boom was taking place due to university baseball and middle school baseball tournaments, and interest in the real American ”Major League” grew. Names of star players such as Babe Ruth began to appear in magazines.
Matsutaro Shoriki, who would later be called the “father of professional baseball,” graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and became a Ministry of Internal Affairs bureaucrat, eventually becoming the Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, which was responsible for maintaining public order in Tokyo Prefecture. In 1923, an attempted assassination of Crown Prince Regent Hirohito (later Emperor Showa) (the Toranomon Incident) occurred, and Shoriki, who was in charge of security, was dismissed from his job.
After retiring from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Shoriki acquired the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and became its president.