by Yoichi Nagata

In the 2024 season, American baseball fans were curious to witness two Japanese players, Shohei Ohtani and Shota Imanaga, bowing to each other on the field during the warmup time before the regular season game between the Dodgers and the Cubs. Bows are seen everywhere on Japanese baseball grounds. Probably the most well-known ground bow is seen during the annual spring and summer Koshien high school tournaments. Players from each team line up on the both sides of home plate and bow facing each other before and after the game. It is a ritual in Japanese scholastic baseball. 

When and where did the ritual of the pre-and post-game bow on the field begin? In 2022, the official 150^th anniversary of Japanese baseball, the ad hoc baseball committee consisted of NPB, the Baseball Federation of Japan and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum concluded that the Tohoku Six-Prefecture Middle School Baseball Tournament in Sendai, Miyagi, sponsored by the Second Higher School, initiated the ritual on November 3-5, 1911. It was incorporated into a regulation of Koshien baseball in 1915, when the tournament was first held.

  The history book of Zenkoku Chuto Gakko Yakyu Taikaishi (History of National Middle-School Baseball Tournament) published in 1929 reveals the idea behind the ritual.

“Bushido (the spirit of Samurai) and sportsmanship have elements in common. However, Yakyu is baseball based on Bushido, apart from American professional baseball. And this is a baseball tournament to promote and spread baseball in Japan. Scholastic baseball must follow the ritual of the Japanese way, “The Bushido match starts with a bow and ends with a bow.” 

However, I have found Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun of April 9, 1897 reporting the ritual in the game between Yamaguchi Higher School and Kumamoto Daigo Higher School in Fukuoka, Kyushu. “Players of the two teams came out to the field, and formed two lines and bowed to each other.”

Besides Yomiuri, two Fukuoka local papers of April 6, 1897, Fukuryo Shimbun and Fukuoka Nichinichireported alike.

  The Yamaguchi school, hungry for a good opponent, sent a letter of challenge to the Kumamoto school for a baseball game. In front of the eyes of professors and students from both schools, the Kumamoto school pounded the Yamaguchi school, 21 to 2. 

“The moment the game was over yells erupted from both cheering groups, “Banzai Daigo Higher School!” and “Banzai Yamaguchi Higher School!” Amidst of the shouts, the nine players of each team made its own line and bowed facing each other in the same manner of the pregame way (Fukuryo Shimbun and Fukuoka Nichinichi Shimbun of April 4, 1897).”

The ritual of the pre-and post-game bow, we now see in high school games at Koshien and college games at Jingu Stadium, was performed fourteen years before the Sendai tournament. However, considering the fact that baseball was introduced to the land of Bushido around 1870, it is unthinkable that for almost 30 years prior to the Fukuoka game, bows had not been performed on baseball grounds.

 I am also interested in another example of “first” in Japanese baseball history. The first admission-charged game was considered for a long time Game 1 between the St. Louis College alumni team from Honolulu and Keio University at Tsunamachi ground, Tokyo, on October 31, 1907 to pay off the travelling expenses of the Hawaii team. However, I have found four newspapers, Tokyo Mainichi Shimbun, Jiji Shimpo, Kokumin Shimbun, and Japan Weekly Mail, reporting that the game between Yokohama Cricket and Athletic Club (YC&AC: a sports club of foreign residents) and Waseda University at Yokohama Park on October 12, 1907, nineteen days before the St. Louis and Keio game, was a paid game to keep the spectators section in order. After my continuous research since then, I am not able to conclude that this was the first admission-charged game yet, because a newspaper suggests some games were so before the YC&AC and Waseda game. The paper doesn’t specify which games were.

  Recently, we learned that baseball was played in Japan as early as 1869, however, it was thought for many years baseball arrived in Japan in the early 1870s. I wonder how far back firsts of the ritual of pre-and post game bow and admission charged game stretch.