About Samurai Baseball in the Rose City
Presented by Chris Keaveney, professor of Japanese, Linfield
College
Japanese baseball, often referred to as “Samurai baseball,” was a
critical feature of life in Portland’s Japantown in the prewar period and
continued to sustain the Japanese-American community during the incarceration
experience in the 1940s. The most important of the Japanese-American baseball
clubs in Portland in the prewar period was the Fuji Athletic Club, founded by
Frank Fukuda, who immigrated to the US from Japan in 1906 at a 17-year old and
founded the Asahi athletic club in Seattle before coming to Portland and
starting the Fuji club in 1927. The model of the baseball that the Fuji
Athletic Club clung to, and in fact all of the Japanese-American clubs in the
Pacific Northwest embraced, was the Japanese model of “Samurai baseball,” an
approach to the game that reflected the values of Bushido (the Way of the
Warrior). This presentation will define features of the Japanese model of
“Samurai baseball” and discuss how this model embodied the values of the
Japanese-American community.
About the Speaker:
Chris Keaveney is professor of Japanese at Linfield College. His
research includes Japanese cultural studies and cultural relations between
China and Japan in the mid-twentieth century. He is the author of numerous
books, including his most recent, Contesting the Myths of Samurai Baseball:
Japan's National Pastime in Literature, Film and Manga. At Linfield since
1997, Keaveney holds a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College and a
master’s and Ph.D. from Washington University.
Photo Credit: Fuji Athletic Club - Vaughn
Street in Portland, Oregon, 7/31/1931 - University of Washington, Digital
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