2026 SEP | A Japanese View from America | Pacific Research Institute | From Masanori Murakami Picking Up Balls to Shohei Ohtani — When Did Japanese People Become Part of the American Landscape?
By Tato Takahama
Pacific Research Institute
September 30, 2026
I cannot forget Masanori Murakami.
In 1964, when I was a student at Berkeley, I went to Fresno to cover the Fresno Giants, then a Class A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. There, I met a 20-year-old left-handed pitcher who had come from Japan: Masanori Murakami.
He was not yet a major leaguer. Before the game, he was out on the field picking up baseballs.
When the game began, the manager realized that I was Japanese and said, “Why don’t you sit in the dugout and watch the game?”
So I did.
I sat in the dugout and watched the game. Murakami came in as a reliever and pitched well.
Not long afterward, Murakami was called up to San Francisco. On September 1, 1964, against the New York Mets, the 20-year-old took the mound in relief and became the first Japan-born player to appear in a Major League Baseball game.
I had seen Murakami just before that piece of history began.
When Murakami arrived in San Francisco, he called me. The young man I had met in Fresno was now a member of the San Francisco Giants, pitching on a major-league stage.
At a time when I was struggling as a college student, Murakami gave me courage.
It remains a precious memory.
Murakami eventually returned to the Nankai Hawks, now the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. In 1968, he went 18-4 with a 2.38 ERA in 40 appearances. He threw 191⅓ innings in 1970 and 234⅔ innings in 1971.
Murakami did not return to Japan merely as “the first Japanese major leaguer.” He became a frontline pitcher in Japanese professional baseball and remained one for years.
Sixty-two years have passed.
Today, the mere presence of Japanese players in Major League Baseball is no longer news. The 2026 postseason makes that clear.
There is Shohei Ohtani. There is Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Seiya Suzuki, Shota Imanaga, Munetaka Murakami and Tatsuya Imai are among the other Japanese players on the postseason stage.
Japanese pitchers start games. They come out of the bullpen. Japanese hitters bat in the middle of the order.
There was a time when simply hearing that a Japanese player had made it to the major leagues was a major story. Today, the questions being followed in Japan are different: How many Japanese players will make it to the World Series? Who will start? Who will bat where?
Major League Baseball itself is no longer a distant foreign sport for Japanese fans.
Sometimes I find myself thinking: What is going on here?
When I was a child, if someone had told me that one day a Japanese player would become a central hitter in the World Series, I probably would not have believed it. To me, Major League Baseball belonged to a world high above my own.
And yet today, if you turn on the television in Los Angeles, Japanese players appear as a matter of course.
Local broadcasters and commentators make a big deal out of almost everything Japanese players do. There is certainly some exaggeration on social media. Still, think about what has happened.
Japanese people are not simply watching American baseball anymore.
Americans are watching Japanese players as a normal part of American baseball.
Thinking about this change, I found myself thinking about South Korea.
In 2026, Korean media have been closely following whether Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Hyeseong Kim will make the postseason roster and whether he might contribute as a pinch-runner or defensive replacement.
As a Japanese person, I can understand that feeling.
“Even if it is only as a pinch-runner, just let him get onto the postseason field.”
That is the kind of thing one wants to say.
Why?
Because I once watched Masanori Murakami in Fresno, before he was a major leaguer. I remember a time when simply seeing a Japanese player step onto an American baseball field was an extraordinary event.
For Korean fans, Hyeseong Kim’s appearance in the postseason can carry that kind of meaning. I recognize the feeling because Japan once stood at that same point.
But Japan has, almost without realizing it, moved beyond that stage.
And it is not just baseball.
Japanese Nobel laureates continue to emerge. Japanese actors appear in Hollywood films. Movies and television dramas about Japan are being made in the United States, with Japanese actors sometimes playing leading roles.
Sushi, sake, matcha and wagyu have entered everyday American life.
Japanese people, too, are sometimes described positively in American society for their cleanliness, honesty, punctuality, meticulousness at work and consideration for others.
When I think about the distance between Japanese and Americans when I was young, the change is remarkable.
Japanese people are no longer simply outsiders looking at America from the outside.
They are part of American sports. They are in movies. They are in television and streaming dramas. They are in universities and research institutions. And they are part of the everyday lives of Americans.
It is fair to say that Japanese people have moved closer to America.
But perhaps it is more accurate to say that Americans have come to see Japanese people as a familiar part of their own society.
When Munetaka Murakami of the Chicago White Sox celebrated his team’s postseason berth in September and shouted, “I AM JAPANESE!” during a television interview, the people around him did not treat it as something strange or uncomfortable. It was a moment of celebration.
And yet, at this point, I want to stop for a moment.
Japanese people have become part of America. Japanese culture has become widely embraced in America.
Does that mean Japan itself is doing just fine?
I am not so sure.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027, released on September 30, offer a reason to pause.
The University of Tokyo ranked 27th in the world. The United States placed seven universities in the global top 10. MIT ranked second; Princeton and Stanford tied for third; Harvard ranked sixth; the California Institute of Technology seventh; and the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale tied for ninth.
THE evaluates universities in five broad areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry. The 2027 rankings use 17 performance indicators.
In other words, this is not simply a list of famous universities.
THE looks at what universities teach and the learning environment they provide. It examines the environment in which research is conducted, the quality of that research, the connections universities have with students and researchers around the world, and the extent to which knowledge and technology generated at universities are connected to industry.
Of course, the fact that the University of Tokyo ranks 27th does not mean that Japanese universities are “bad.” University rankings use different methodologies, and rankings themselves have limitations.
Still, the numbers are worth thinking about.
Japanese elementary education, meanwhile, is often viewed favorably in the United States.
American observers are struck by children cleaning their own classrooms, eating school lunches together, keeping to schedules, carrying out their responsibilities and learning to consider the people around them.
From an American perspective, Japanese elementary schools can present scenes that are strikingly different from those found in many American schools.
Those children grow up and go on to universities.
So why is it that when Japan enters the global competition for knowledge and research, the gap with leading American universities becomes so pronounced?
Now that Japanese people and Japanese culture have become so widely accepted in America, perhaps this is precisely the time to take another look at Japanese higher education itself.
The story that began for me with a 20-year-old Japanese pitcher picking up baseballs in Fresno has come a very long way.
From Murakami to Ohtani, Japanese people have become part of the American landscape.
That is something to appreciate.
But it should not be the end of the conversation.
“Japanese people are great” is not an answer.
There is still much to think about.
The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cultural News.
Note: English translation was prepared by the author. Translation assistance tools may have been used.
2026 SEP | A Japanese View from America | PRI | 村上雅則の球拾いから大谷翔平まで――日本人はいつからアメリカの景色の一部になったのか