Cut Through the Roaring Thunder with Your Swing!

“Cut through the roaring thunder with your swing!
Bark! Fight! Advance toward glorious victory!”
—Japanese baseball fight song

Now that the Team Japan has staked a legitimate claim to the title of baseball's World Champions by winning the recent and unexpectedly popular World Baseball Classic, it is the perfect time to take a look at another of Japan's great, yet little-known, contributions to the sport: the Japanese baseball card.

Japan has been wild about the game of baseball since the 1870s, when a visiting American professor first introduced it to them. In fact, they consider it to be their national pastime. They've also placed their own unique imprint on the game. The rules are essentially the same but the approach is different. Displaying group harmony and team spirit are as important as winning. Playing to a tie is acceptable, as neither team “loses face.” Attending a game is a cacophonous affair, although quite different from attending a game in the United States. Many fans are ushered into organized cheering sections and the singing, chanting and rhythmic clapping is done in unison and continues nonstop until the final out. Yes, you can buy a cold beer (or better yet, whiskey!), but expect some fried squid on a stick instead of a hot dog.

Like other delightful mutations that have come as a result of foreign artisans dipping into the American popular culture trough (i.e., contemporary, West African, hand-painted barber shop signs that depict hairstyles last seen on the '80s R&B stars, Boys II Men; or the surf guitar that pops up in the middle of a Bollywood musical), Japanese baseball cards take the basic idea of a baseball card and turn it into something new and uniquely Japanese.

Although most Japanese cards being produced today resemble American-style baseball cards, those printed from the early 1900s through the late 1960s portray a neat collision of East and West sensibilities. It is not unusual to find a card combining the swash-y script typography normally seen on American baseball uniforms with the fluid line of a traditional Japanese pen and ink illustration (Figs.1 and 2). From illustrated “menko” cards rendered in a style somewhere between classic Japanese woodblock printing and contemporary anime art (Fig. 3) to die-cut baseball player masks (Fig. 4) that derive from the thousands-year-old Japanese tradition of using masks in performance and ritual, Japanese baseball cards cut an illustrative swath through 20th century Japanese popular art and vernacular.

Baseball (called yakyu or besuburo in Japan) is taken very seriously in Japan—if a player is not passing out from exhaustion or urinating blood after practice they haven't been trying hard enough. Yet Japanese baseball cards are the exact opposite. Playfully rendered images depict Japanese players in various states of expression from dramatically heroic to stone-faced passivity. These cards, which were designed exclusively for use by children, embody many of the characteristics that we have come to love about Japanese popular culture: the combination of chaos and simplicity, innocence and wisdom, the commingling of the masculine and feminine. I doubt we will ever see a pink American baseball card, much less one adorned with bows and flowers (Fig. 5).

Unlike U.S. cards, which tend to be a standard size and shape, Japanese cards come in a variety of formats. There are “menko” cards (Fig. 6), which are used in a game of card flipping that dates back to the 17th century. These cards were intended for rough play and are printed with bold colorful graphics on thick cardboard stock and come in an array of die-cut shapes. There are bromides (Fig. 7), which are essentially black-and-white or sepia-toned photographs that push the limits of information excess when they incorporate typography into the photo-printing process. Cards were packaged with gum, caramel and other food products. There were also many types of boxed card sets containing reading cards (karuta) and game-playing cards (Fig. 8). The packaging of cards was also different than the wax packages we are used to in the US. Many bromide and “menko” cards were wrapped in newsprint, one or two at a time, and sold from hanging bundles called “tabas” (Fig 9).

The reverse side of Japanese cards (Fig 10) is generally devoid of the statistical information that occupies the back of U.S. cards and instead is adorned with a seemingly random combination of words, numbers and images. Each of these elements has a specific function. Some of the information might pertain to a reading, math, or English lesson, while other imagery is used in any of the various games that a child can play with these multipurpose cards, from Rock, Paper, Scissors to traditional playing card games.

Although card production came to a halt during WWII, as the game itself was banned along with anything else associated with America, the printing of cards picked up again in the late 1940s and has continued, unfettered, ever since. Sadly, and as was inevitable, American influence further encroached and Japanese baseball cards began to take on more of an American look. They are now virtually indistinguishable from their glossy, hyper-designed, western counterparts—although the occasional anomaly sometimes slips through (Fig. 11). The hobby today (especially in the United States) caters to an increasingly adult audience where cards are more commodities than toys.

Major League Baseball is a growing global enterprise, with foreign-born players— representing 15 different countries-now occupying 27 percent of roster space. This includes a number of terrific players from Japan, such as all stars Hideki Matsui and Ichiro. As America looks to the East for talent, is it wishful thinking (not to mention hopelessly nostalgic) to hope that U.S. card manufacturers might someday look to other countries for inspiration—to make collecting baseball cards, I don't know, for kids again?