Sports in Japan

On 4/15 I went to Koshien stadium in Nishinomiya (close to Kobe) to watch the Hanshin Tigers, Osaka's local baseball team, play the Chunichi Dragons. Despite the fact that the Tigers lost 9-2, which was a pretty big disappointment (although they did beat the Dragons the following day…), the experience was packed with Visual Anthropological richness.
Comparing what I witnessed at the Tigers match with an ordinary baseball game in the states, several differences popped out at me. One was the overwhelming group mentality that seemed to prevail throughout the stadium, even more so than one would find in a professional sports match in the US (hard to imagine right?). It seemed as though everyone, and I mean EVERYONE (including fragile-looking old ladies, babies, and even pets outside of the stadium), were completely decked out from head to toe in Tiger's paraphernalia. The costumes could be quite elaborate, like the man featured in the photograph below (and yes, it is a man...). This unspoken dress code seemed to be very carefully followed by everyone.

Related to this group mentality aspect, something I found to be very interesting was that there was an entire section in the stadium that was filled with a sea of all blue: the Dragons fans .In the US it is not uncommon for fans of the non-home team to show up at games, but I think in general they sit dispersed throughout the crowd: never have I seen an entire group occupying an entire seating section together. It must of taken massive amounts of coordination for something like that to be achieved I think.

Probably the biggest display of group effort and coordination I saw at the match was the tradition of releasing around 50,000 balloons during the 7th inning stretch – it was truly a sight to be seen. I actually did a little test regarding this: I decided to release my balloons a little bit early in order to see if it would have a chain-reaction effect throughout the crowd, but after all the Japanese fans were way too accustomed to this tradition to be fooled: the only people who released there balloons right after me were other foreigners who came in our group of 40 or so (I know, it’s kind of an evil experiment…). In the end, the group dynamic of coordination prevailed.
All in all the experience was truly an amazing one. It demonstrated to me the large interplay between group dynamics/mentality and sports, both of which play a large role in Japanese culture.

Links:

http://hanshintigers.jp/ Hanshin Tiger's official website (in Japanese)

Links to other student's blog posts about the Tigers:

http://impossiblejapan.blogspot.com/2009/04/sports-in-japan.html

http://heicheldoginjapan.blogspot.com/2009/04/ichinisan-strikes-your-out.html

http://whatputstheoinosaka.blogspot.com/2009/04/sports-in-japan.html

http://intheeyewiththekampai-ceh.blogspot.com/2009/04/sports-in-japan.html

http://kaizybar.blogspot.com/2009/04/sport-in-japan.html

http://orangeberri07.blogspot.com/2009/04/murder-of-colonel-sanders.html