In episode 6 we dig into the history of Kansai’s beloved Hanshin Tigers baseball club. Learning about this team can teach us a lot about Japanese history and culture. We also go deep on the infamous Curse of the Colonel, and talk about some Osaka cuisine you just can’t miss!
Chapters:
0:00 Intro/Osaka Cuisine
5:51 Hanshin Tigers
34:26 Recommendation
Koshien Stadium:
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Abaraya:
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Hello and welcome to Japan Media Tour, I’m your host Stephen T.M., and today we’re going to be talking about the Hanshin Tigers baseball team -Now I know not everyone is a sports fan, but you’re going to want to stick around to learn some Japanese history and to
Hear about the mysterious Curse of the Colonel -My hope is that this podcast will help create a fuller picture of Japanese culture and enable us to understand why modern Japan is the way it is -This would be impossible without taking some time to look at the impact of the nation’s favourite
Sport, brought over by the Americans in 1872 -The Hanshin Tigers are one of the most popular teams in Japan, and their story is pretty fascinating -But before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about the cuisine of Osaka
-Osaka is often called the ‘kitchen of Japan’, and is famous for all sort of different foods, such as takoyaki, okonomiyaki, and yakisoba -All kinds of different yaki -Yaki basically means ‘grilled’ in Japanese, by the way -So takoyaki, or grilled octopus, is one of the Osakan streets foods
You’ll see absolutely everywhere -Street vendors have divotted trays where they can cook lots of doughy little takoyaki balls at a time, and with great skill I might have invented that word divotted by the way, but I like it. What I mean is that the
Trays have lots of hemispherical impressions to help form the takoyaki into little balls -Takoyaki usually consist of batter, octopus, and then some combination of ginger, seaweed, and green onions, covered in mayonnaise and a special kind of barbecue sauce
-Though there are many variations of the dish, I’ve even had a few with cheese in them before -Be careful when eating these by the way, because they are usually about a million degrees and will burn your mouth off -Seriously, they’re like molten lava on the inside
-By the way there’s a Japanese term called ‘neko-jita’ or ‘cat tongue’ which refers to people who are unable to handle high temperature foods -I’m not sure if we have a word like this in English, but I like it -Actually I have a bit of a neko-jita myself
-All right so the next Osakan food is okonomiyaki, which essentially has the same ingredients as takoyaki, give or take a few depending on the variety of okonomiyaki you get -The word okonomi actually translates to ‘what you like’ -So it’s the things that you like, grilled -It’s pretty much a savoury pancake,
And is sometimes referred to as Japanese pizza at certain restaurants – I hate when they do this though, because it’s nothing like pizza, and in my opinion, not nearly as good -Still, it’s pretty fun to go out and eat okonomiyaki, as it’s usually cooked on a skillet
Right in from of you, or you cook it yourself -Take it easy though, it’s pretty filling, and they usually douse it in mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce, which is like oyster sauce, ketchup, sugar, and bulldog sauce -By the way, bulldog sauce is the
Japanese brand name for that really difficult to pronounce sauce that starts with a W. You know what I’m talking about (worcestershire sauce) -The last Osakan dish on the menu today is kushikatsu, also known as kushiage -This is pretty much a skewer with
Something deep fried and delicious on it, that you then dip in yet another brown sauce – they love brown sauce in Osaka -The sauce by the way is often left in a large tub on the table at the restaurant, so you’re essentially sharing with the patrons who came
Before you, and those who will come after you -Don’t let that scare you though! For this reason there is a very strict “no double-dipping” policy at Osaka’s izakaya, and if you need some extra sauce, you can use a piece of cabbage to scoop it up, and pour it onto your kushikatsu
-Certain restaurants stopped doing the communal sauce containers due to the covid pandemic, but that is the traditional way to have kushikatsu -Some common types of skewer include pork, mushroom, lotus root, and quail egg -These are delicious and go perfectly with an ice cold beer -Osaka is a fun place
With a great food and drinking culture -It might even have the best izakayas in all of Japan – though that’s up for debate -If you haven’t been to Osaka, I’m sure it’s already on your list and I don’t need to urge you to go check it out for yourself
-So now let’s get to the topic of the day, the Hanshin Tigers -As I mentioned, baseball was brought over to Japan from the Americans in, when else but the Meiji Era -I talked about the Meiji Period in our episode on
The film Lady Snowblood, but as a quick reminder, this was the time in Japan’s history when the country finally opened back up to the rest of the world after the insulation of the Edo Period -The Americans, via the Perry Expedition, were the ones who really forced Japan to open up ports
For trade, and this planted the seeds for the entanglement between Japanese and American culture -This connection would certainly have some hiccups along the way, but safe to say that after World War 2 Japan’s obsession with all things American was in full swing,
And this of course includes baseball -So in 1935, just about 60 years after America’s pastime was introduced to Japan, the Hanshin Tigers were founded by the Hanshin Electric Railway Company, though the team was known at that time as the Osaka Tigers
-The team name was chosen via a company wide poll, and one employee named Saburo Matsubara had previously been to Detroit and noted many similarities between Osaka and The Motor City -And for those of you who aren’t aware, the significance of this is that Detroit’s Major
League Baseball team is called the Tigers -Several Nihon Professional Baseball, or NPB teams actually got their names, and sometimes even their logo designs from MLB teams -For example the Chunichi Dragons style themselves after the LA Dodgers, and the Yomiuri Giants after the San Francisco Giants -So while the Tigers had early success in
Pro baseball, winning league championships in 1937 and 38, they are often noted for the long droughts without winning which were to come later -Unfortunately for them, in the midst of their early success, a lot of their players ended up being drafted into the army
-11 of their young players actually ended up as casualties of the Second World War -English names were actually banned in Japan by Emperor Hirohito in 1941, at which time the Tigers went by the unambiguous name The Hanshin Baseball Club -After the War they changed their name back to the Osaka Tigers
-They ended up winning a couple more league titles in the 1940s, but by the time the 50s rolled around, the rival Yomiuri Giants from Tokyo began to dominate -The Tigers actually ended up losing to the Giants 4 times
In a row in the league finals in the late 50s -I don’t think I can really overstate the hatred between these two teams and their fans – think Real Madrid and Barcelona, or more analogously, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees -So the NPB is split into two leagues, the
Central League and the Pacific League, mirroring the American League and National League of the MLB – The Tigers were the first Central League team to sign a non-Japanese player, Mike Solomko -Solomko was a member of the US army who was stationed in Japan, and decided to try
Out for the Tigers in the 1959 offseason -A fun fact about Solomko – He married a Japanese woman and stayed in Japan after retiring and sold imported cookware -As we’ll see later in the episode, foreign players would continue to
Play key roles for the Tigers for years to come -Now, the team were going by the name the Osaka Tigers, but they didn’t actually play in Osaka, they actually played, as they still do today, in Nishinomiya, Hyogo prefecture -So they decided to change their
Name to the Hanshin Tigers -Hanshin is not only the name of the railway company that founded the team, but also the name for the area between Osaka and Kobe -In fact, the word Hanshin comes from an alternate reading of the final kanji in the word Osaka,
And the first kanji in the word Kobe -For those of you who aren’t aware, there are multiple pronunciations of most kanji which are called On-yomi and Kun-yomi -On-Yomi is the original Chinese reading, whereas Kun-Yomi is the Japanese reading -The Hanshin Tigers play at Koshien stadium, which was built in 1924, and at
The time was the largest stadium in all of Asia -I was shocked to find out that the stadium has a capacity of over 47,000 people, because when you’re there it feels so intimate, though it does get raucous when the Tigers are on their game -This storied field is also where the
Japanese National high school baseball tournament, which is simply called Koshien, is played every year – this is definitely on my bucket list of events to go to in Japan -I’ve been to Koshien Stadium to see a Tigers game – it was actually Tigers vs. Giants – but
I think it would be really cool to go to the legendary high school tournament as well -Pretty much every Japanese legend has competed in this tourney, including Ohtani, Ichiro, Masahiro Tanaka, and Yu Darvish -So each year the Tigers are sent packing
On a 3 week road trip, known as the “Road of Death” while the Koshien tournament takes place at their home stadium of the same name -I guess fans kind of hate this and the team tends to drop down in the standings when this road trip comes around
-Interestingly, the Tigers play what are officially considered home games at their rival Orix Buffaloes stadium in Osaka during the Road of Death -All that being said, Tigers fans are famous for being the wildest group of ultras in Japan -I don’t know if you’d call them ultras, I just like that term so
I borrowed it from the European football fans -Hanshin fans travel well and are even known to drown out the home team when cheering and singing loudly at opponents’ stadiums -They were once known for fighting in the stands, but apparently this
Has died down over the years, which is good -One famous tradition of the Tigers is the release of hundreds of balloons after the 7th inning stretch and the singing of the Tigers’ team song -The Tigers even do this at away games, though it is banned at the Yomiuri Giants’ Tokyo Dome
-Of course, with the team’s long history they have accumulated a lot of legendary players, including a few who played in the MLB as well -Some of the notable members of this exclusive club are Hideki Irabu, Kei Igawa, Kyuji Fujikawa, and Cecil Fielder, the father of Prince Fielder
-Hanshin has retired just 3 numbers in their almost 90-year history, 10, 11, and 23 -10 is for Fumio Fujimura, the famously superstitious player who wouldn’t shave before games, and vowed never to hurt an insect -He held the NPB single season record for hits
With 191, which stood for 44 years until it was broken by the incomparable Ichiro Suzuki -Fujimura is also Hanshin’s all time leader in RBIs, and is of course in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame -Number 11 is for Minoru Murayama
Who is second all time in wins amongst Tigers pitchers, and first in strikeouts -And 23 is for Yoshio Yoshida, who also happened to be the Tigers manager when they won their first Japan Series, which is like the World Series of the NPB
-So the Tigers first long drought without a major title started in the 60s and didn’t end until 1985, when they finally secured their first Japan Series victory -However, after this one ended, a new drought would begin, and it would be a long time
Before they took home another championship -So what caused the Tigers to suffer so long without winning another Japan Series? -Perhaps it was something supernatural -Allow me now to tell you about the infamous Curse of the Colonel -But who is this colonel? Some legendary military figure out of the Japanese history books?
-Not quite. It was Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame -So the story goes like this: -In 1985, after winning the Central League championship, Tigers fans flooded the streets of the Dotonbori District to celebrate -This is the area that has the famous Glico Man sign – you know that neon
Sign with the runner who has his arms up in the air. Classic tourist attraction -Anyway the fans started grabbing lookalikes of all the players from the team and throwing them into the Dotonbori River, which is actually a canal, but Google maps calls
It a river so I’ll just stick with that for now -Now, most of the players were Japanese, so they were able to find people who looked reasonably like each member of the squad, but when it came
Time to find a doppelganger of American star Randy Bass, it proved to be a little more difficult -He was a large white man with a beard, which in 1980s Japan was something of a rarity -These days they could have just gone down to the local Book Off store and looked around the
Bargain bins until they found one -So instead of finding a real flesh-and-blood human, the rabid fans chose to sacrifice an effigy of Bass -By that I mean they found a life-sized statue of KFC’s Colonel Sanders, and tossed it off
The Ebisu Bridge into the river below -This was the start of the famous Curse of the Colonel that would come to plague the Tigers for decades -And I just love that KFC is at the centre of all this, because KFC has carved itself out a
Huge slice of Japanese culture – I’m sure a lot of you have heard that KFC has become an extremely popular Christmas meal for families in Japan -In fact, you have to reserve your special KFC Christmas dinner well in advance as they often run out
-By the way, while a lot of reports out there say that the famous Colonel Sanders statue was tossed off the Ebisu Bridge after the team won the Japan Series, it actually happened one round earlier, after the Central League championship, which you can think of like the semi-final
-Just thought I’d clear that up, as it’s a common misconception due to inaccurate reporting, mostly in Western media -So there’s actually more to the curse than just the renewed championship drought -One of the Hanshin Tigers star players, Masayuki Kakefu ended up getting injured shortly after, and he was someone who never got hurt,
Having previously played 663 straight games -He ended up retiring at the young age of 33 -On top of that, their ace, Chikafusa Ikeda broke his heel in 86 -The team also lost the draft lottery an unprecedented 12 times in a row -This includes missing out on superstars like Hideo Nomo,
Hideki Matsui, Sho Nakata, and Yusei Kikuchi -This streak of bad luck finally ended in 2012 when they nabbed Shintaro Fujinami -And how about Randy Bass, for whom the Colonel had been used as a stand-in that fateful October day -Well Bass was a superstar player in his own right,
Winning the NPB’s triple crown twice in his career -The triple crown, for those unfamiliar with baseball terminology, is when a player leads the league in 3 of the key batting categories, namely home runs, batting average, and runs batted in -Bass also still holds the NPBs highest
Single-season batting average record, and is the Hanshin Tiger’s all time batting average leader -Oh, and did I mention he was crowned Japan Series MVP in 1985 -So how did a failed Major Leaguer from Oklahoma end up as one of the
Greatest American players in NPB history? -That first bit sounds a little harsh – I don’t know that he necessarily failed, or if he just wasn’t given the chance he needed to blossom into a star like he did in Japan -He was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in
The 7th round of the 1972 MLB draft -He was a beast in the minors, but couldn’t get things going in the majors -He bounced around a few Major League teams, but eventually landed in the NPB with the Hanshin Tigers -He got off to a rough start in the Japanese League too, mostly
Due to poor defence in the outfield -But it wasn’t long until he was moved to first base, and he started mashing -From 1984 he was crushing baseballs, and 1985 saw Bass become an absolute monster -A perfect fit in a batting order that included the likes of Akinobu Okada, Akinobu Mayumi, and Masayuki Kakefu
-Bass, Okada, and Kakefu went off for 54, 35, and 40 home runs respectively, all batting .300+ and putting up 100+ RBIs -Randy Bass was the first foreign-born player to hit 50 HR in a season, and the second to win the triple crown
-Bass actually got within 2 home runs of the legendary Sadaharu Oh’s single season record -And with two games left against Oh’s Yomiuri Giants to set the record, the Giants chose to intentionally walk Bass on most of his at-bats -This has developed into a kind of conspiracy
Theory, with some saying that Oh wouldn’t let Bass attempt to break his record, or that the Giants wouldn’t give him the chance to do so -It might have just been smart management to avoid pitching to Bass, but either way, the American was pretty upset about this
-Sadaharu Oh’s single-season home run record was eventually broken in 2013 by the Yakult Swallow’s Wladimir Balentien, a Curacao native -Balentien ended up getting 60 that year -A funny sidenote on Bass now: he was famous for his big bushy beard and was
Paid $500k by Gilette to shave it off in a commercial, which was shocking for fans -Apparently it also led to a sales boom for Gilette, so I guess the stunt worked -Japan definitely has some marketing geniuses, and I’ll be sure to touch on some more interesting
Japanese advertising in future episodes -So in 1986, Bass won the triple crown for the second year in a row, but the Tigers disappointed fans with a .500 record -Since winning the Japan Series, the team seemed to fall off a cliff, or maybe jumped
Off a bridge would be more accurate? Off the Ebisubashi into the Dotonbori River -In the 1987 season they finished in dead last in the central League due to a combination of bad luck, bad management, and cost-cutting -Then in 1988 Bass’s son was diagnosed with a brain tumor -The surgery was going
To cost around $40,000, but luckily it was in Bass’s contract that his family’s medical expenses would be taken care of by the Tigers -He also had permission to go back to the US to be with his son during this difficult time -But wait, the Tigers management, led at the time
By Shingo Furiya tried to go back on their word -Though they had said in a meeting with Bass that they would allow him to go back, they later denied this, and fired Bass for leaving Japan -Little did they know, Bass had worn a wire to their previous meeting when they had said
He would be allowed to go, and he ended up exposing the crooked Hanshin management group, causing huge backlash against the organization from both fans and media -The blame for all of this fell on Shingo Furiya, who wasn’t really a baseball guy
-He was just a businessman, trying to cut costs, and he thought he could save some money with the dismissal of their star player Randy Bass -All the negative press became too much for Furiya, and he ended up committing suicide over the ordeal
-Bass ended up retiring from baseball and going into politics soon after -It wasn’t until 1992 that the Tigers had a winning record again – this is how talk of a curse really started spreading around -So what ever happened with that curse anyway?
-Its impact continued to be felt in the Osaka area for decades – and any time the Tigers got anywhere close to a Central League title, KFC stores in the Hanshin region would bring their Colonel Sanders statues inside, or bolt them to the ground as though raiders
Were coming to ransack their village -Unfortunately, during the 2003 Dotonbori River celebration, when the tigers had won their first Central League title in 18 years, one of the over 5000 people who took the plunge into the river ended up drowning -This led to the reconstruction of the Ebisu bridge, making it more difficult
For fans to dive in -So back in 1988, the popular Osaka-based show Knight Scoop tried to find the Colonel Sanders statue -This is a program where viewers sent in mysteries that the show must attempt to solve -They tried, but were unsuccessful on 4 attempts to recover the missing Colonel
-Knight Scoop is actually sometimes credited with being the reason why the Curse of the Colonel story gained so much traction -After all that searching it was a maintenance crew who finally found the statue of Colonel Sanders in 2009 while they were dredging the Dotonbori River -The divers who ended up finding the statue
In 2009 first thought they had found a corpse or simply some trash at the bottom of the river -But cheers went out when they realized it was the Colonel, albeit with a few pieces missing -In fact they weren’t able to recover his left hand or his glasses,
And some people thought that meant the curse was bound to continue until they turned up -Either way, finding the statue was a glimmer of hope that maybe the team was one step closer to breaking the decades long curse -The statue actually went through a ritual
Cleansing at a shrine in the Kansai region -After this it was paraded around to a few different locations around Japan -The KFC restaurant which once housed the statue has since closed by the way, and the statue is now kept at Japan’s KFC headquarters
In Yokohama, hidden from public view -So there are a lot of references to the Curse of the Colonel in manga like Ranma 1 half, and in games like Sonic Adventure -In fact, Rumiko Takahashi – author of manga such as the aforementioned Ranma 1 half,
Urusei Yatsura, and Inuyasha, also happens to be a huge tigers fan -She even made a manga called “Tiger” in 2015 about a Tigers fan who dies before seeing them win the Japan Series -Takahashi’s character Ramu-chan has even
Become something of a mascot for the baseball team – notice she’s always wears tiger print clothing -They’ve sold tons of merch with this extraterrestrial girl on it over the years -So there’s your token anime connection for this episode of Japan Media Tour
-Now, in 2003, the Hanshin Tigers finally made it back to the Japan Series, but lost in 7 games to the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, who are now known as the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, after being purchased by Japan’s 2nd largest company in 2005 -By the way, Fukuoka went on to absolutely
Dominate the 2010s, winning 7 times from 2011-2020 – that must be that SoftBank money paying off -The Tigers made it to the Series again in 2005, but once again lost, this time getting swept in 4 games by the Chiba Lotte Marines -But then it happened, finally,
Hanshin won their second ever Japan Series in 2023 -They defeated the Orix Buffaloes, the 2022 Series champs, in 7 games, in what by all accounts was one of the most exciting Japan Series of the 21st century, and certainly one I was tracking closely -The Buffaloes, by the way, are an Osaka based
Team, so this is like the Subway Series of Japanese Baseball -For those who may not be aware, the Subway Series is when the 2 New York-based MLB teams, the Mets and the Yankees play each other -By the way, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was
Recently signed by the LA Dodgers, along with Shohei Ohtani, in case you haven’t heard the news, started game 1 of the 2023 Japan Series and got absolutely brutalized by Hanshin -Yamomoto made up for this in game 6 though, pitching
A 138 pitch complete game with 14 strikeouts -What a way to go out in his final game for Orix -Now, I’m not a Hanshin fan, but I can only imagine what it was like for their fans, watching
The back and forth play between the Tigers and Buffaloes – one of the most magical games, for Hanshin fans anyway, was game 5 in which they came back from a 2-run deficit to score
6 runs in the 8th inning and come out victorious -Hanshin ended up taking game 7 by a score of 7-1 to secure their 2nd Japan Series title -The Tigers achieved this by playing Japanese style baseball – what I mean by this is “small ball”, or lots of singles
And bunts, and fewer home runs -Pretty much the opposite of how they’d done it back in 85 -Sorry if I’m dropping too much baseball terminology in there, but I thought I had to get a little bit into this episode -Outfielder Koji Chikamoto was awarded the Japan Series Most Valuable Player
Award with 14 hits through 7 games -In celebration, many Tigers fans jumped into the Dotonbori, including one man dressed as Colonel Sanders -The curse was finally broken! -And in that same year, Randy Bass was inducted into the Japanese baseball hall of fame -All was right in the world of Japanese baseball
-The Tigers saga has many parallels to that of the Boston Red Sox -A legendary team with a big city rival, who went on a long title drought before lifting a perceived curse -Just as the Tigers have their rival Yomiuri Giants from Tokyo, the Red Sox have the New York Yankees
-And while Hanshin had their Curse of the Colonel, Boston had the Curse of the Bambino -It gets its name from the legendary player Babe Ruth, whose nickname was The Bambino -Ruth was sent from the Red Sox to their rival New York Yankees
-This curse spanned 86 years from 1918 to 2004, when the Red Sox finally won a World Series title -There’s something about the Tigers being eternal underdogs that has makes them easy to cheer for -I’m not even a Tigers fan, but I’m always happy when they do well
-And I know some of you aren’t baseball fans, but I hope you stuck around and maybe learned something new about Japan in the process -Maybe now you can understand what the long-suffering fanbase in the Kansai region has gone through over the past few decades, which of
Course is an entire lifetime for a lot of them -Seriously, go watch some of the celebrations on YouTube, this is literally the highlight of a lot of people’s lives – and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that -Sports are just as arbitrary a thing
To care about as a lot of other pastimes in our lives, and no less beautiful when you dig under the surface a little bit -You truly never know what’s going to happen next in the world of sports -So that’s it for this episode on the Hanshin Tigers -Stay tuned for my
Weekly recommendations, which you won’t want to miss! and for a preview of next week’s episode -So as usual, before I say goodbye, I’ve got a recommendation for you -I’ll do 2 recommendations today actually -So the first is pretty obvious – it’s
Koshien Stadium, home of the Hanshin Tigers -The crowd, the atmosphere, the historic building itself – There’s magic in that place -It’ll transport you back to Showa Era Japan for a couple hours -They’ve got some good food
Too – nothing better than eating some yakisoba and enjoying a cold drink while you watch the game -And for our bonus recommendation I’ve got a little sushi spot in Osaka called Abaraya -It’s about a 10 minute walk from Namba Station, but it’s in a slightly
Quieter area – not quite as hectic as Dotonbori -Abaraya has really good sushi, but also some nice crispy tempura, and the Kansai classic, kushikatsu -Whatever you get here, you won’t be disappointed -It’s a little family owned spot and not too expensive,
So go and support Abaraya if you’re ever in Osaka -I hope you guys are taking notes by the way, your next Japan trip is going to be awesome if you hit some of these spots -Anyway, that’s all for our episode on the Hanshin Tigers, I know it was a little
Departure from our usual programming -I just felt like I had to throw some baseball content into the mix to truly bring you on a Japanese adventure -Next time, I’m going back to my roots and talking about the beloved Super Nintendo game Zelda: A Link to the Past -It’s one of my favourite games
And I’m really excited to share it with you -Until then, this is Stephen T.M. signing off, and I’ll see you next time to talk about, A Link to the Past