The Chrysanthemum and the Bat

The Chrysanthemum and the Bat
Author: Robert Whiting
Publisher: Avon Books
Total Pages: 247
Release: 1983-05-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780380631155

Explains the importance of baseball in the national life of modern Japan and the ways in which the Japanese have brought some of the traditions of Bushido and Kabuki to this American-born game

Baseball Without Borders

Baseball Without Borders
Author: George Gmelch
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 080325606X

A televised baseball game from Puerto Rico, Japan, or even Cuba might look a lot like the North American game. Beneath the outward similarities, however the uniforms and equipment and basic rules there is usually a very different history and culture influencing the nuances of the sport. These differences are what interest the authors of Baseball without Borders, a book about America's national pastime going global and undergoing instructive, entertaining, and sometimes curious changes in the process. The contributors, leading authorities on baseball in the fourteen nations under consideration, look at how the game was imported how it took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed and what these local and regional trends and features say about the sport's place in particular cultures. Organized by region Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific and written by journalists, historians, anthropologists, and English professors, these original essays reflect diverse perspectives and range across a refreshingly wide array of subjects: from high school baseball in Japan and Little League in Taiwan to fan behavior in Cuba and the politics of baseball in China and Korea.

Tokyo Junkie

Tokyo Junkie
Author: Robert Whiting
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1611729491

Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic 60-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world. Follow author Robert Whiting (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, Tokyo Underworld) as he watches Tokyo transform during the 1964 Olympics, rubs shoulders with the Yakuza and comes face to face with the city’s dark underbelly, interviews Japan’s baseball elite after publishing his first best-selling book on the subject, and learns how politics and sports collide to produce a cultural landscape unlike any other, even as a new Olympics is postponed and the COVID virus ravages the nation. A colorful social history of what Anthony Bourdain dubbed, “the greatest city in the world,” Tokyo Junkie is a revealing account by an accomplished journalist who witnessed it all firsthand and, in the process, had his own dramatic personal transformation.

Popularizing Anthropology

Popularizing Anthropology
Author: Jeremy McClancy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134777949

Anthropology written for a popular audience is the most neglected branch of the discipline. In the 1980s postmodernist anthropologists began to explore the literary and reflective aspects of their work. Popularizing Anthropology advances that trend by looking at a key but previously marginalized genre of anthropology. The contributors, who are well known anthropologists, explore such themes as: why so many anthropologists are women; how the Japanese have reacted to Ruth Benedict; why Margaret Mead became so successful; how the French media promote Levi-Strauss and Louis Dumont; Why Bruce Chatwin tells us more about Aboriginals than many anthropologists in Australia; how personal accounts of fieldwork have evolved since the 1950s; how to write a personal account of fieldwork. Popularizing Anthropology unearths a submerged tradition within anthropology and reveals that, from the beginning, anthropologists have looked beyond the boundaries of the academy for their listeners. It aims to establish the popularization of the discipline as an illuminating topic of investigation in its own right, arguing that it is not an irrelevant appendage to the main body of the subject but has always been an integral part of it.

Taking in a Game

Taking in a Game
Author: Joseph A. Reaves
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2004-05-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803290013

In Taking in a Game, Joseph A. Reaves examines the development of baseball in Korea, the Philippines, Mainland China, and Taiwan, as well as the more widely known story of baseball in Japan. In this entertaining and informed account, Reaves covers everything from baseball in Qing Dynasty China in the nineteenth century to the 2000 Sydney Olympics bronze-medal match between Japan and Korea. Reaves guides the reader through a history of Asian baseball, the cultures that surround it, and the future of what has become a great Asian game.

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1999

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1999
Author: Peter M. Rutkoff
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2000-06-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780786408320

This is an anthology of 23 papers that were presented at the Eleventh Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, held June 9-11, 1999, and co-sponsored by the State University of New York at Oneonta and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The papers focus on the antecedents of baseball and the early history of America's national pastime and are divided into five parts: "Baseball and the American Imagination," "Baseball and American Culture," "Baseball and American Society," "Baseball and American Business" and "Baseball and the Fan." The preface is by series editor Alvin L. Hall, and an introduction is provided by the editor of the volume, Peter M. Rutkoff.

Baseball Beyond Our Borders

Baseball Beyond Our Borders
Author: George Gmelch
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2017
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1496201035

Baseball Beyond Our Borders celebrates the globalization of the game while highlighting the different histories and cultures of the nations in which the sport is played. This collection of essays tells the story of America's national pastime as it has spread across the world and undergone instructive, entertaining, and sometimes quirky changes in the process. Covering nineteen countries and a U.S. territory, the contributors show how each country imported baseball, how baseball took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed, and what local and regional traits tell us about the sport's place in each culture. But what lies in store as baseball's passport fills up with far-flung stamps? Will the international migration of players homogenize baseball? What role will the World Baseball Classic play? These are just a few of the questions the authors pose.

The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball

The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball
Author: John Thorn
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
Total Pages: 856
Release: 1997
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781578660049

Here are fascinating glimpses of the history of America's national pastime from an all-star lineup including Walt Whitman, E.L. Doctorow, John Updike, Philip Roth and Garrison Keillor. Revel in another ear through Walt Whitman's report of a rugged game played before the Civil War. Relive how Candy Cummings perfected the first curve ball, how baseball drew the color line in1 887, and how Bob Carroll uncovered Nate Colbert's hidden RBI record in 1972. All this and much, much more.