Youth Baseball and Colonial Identity in Taiwan, 1920-1968

Youth Baseball and Colonial Identity in Taiwan, 1920–1968

John Harney

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Volume 22, Number1, Fall 2013, pp. 20-43 (Article)

Published by University of Nebraska PressDOI: 10.1353/nin.2013.0044

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Centre College (6 Mar 2014 10:04 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nin/summary/v022/22.1.harney.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nin/summary/v022/22.1.harney.html

Youth Baseball and Colonial Identity in Taiwan, 1920– 1968

John Harney

In 1968, the Hongye team walked off the baseball diamond as victors and national heroes. Their victory came at the expense of a Japanese team widely reported in the Taiwanese press as champions of the world. The athletes were children, middle- school- aged boys, representing a school in the rural south-east of the island. Their opponents hailed from the same region of Japan, Wakayama, that had produced the Little League World Series champions of the year before. The Taizhong Gold Dragons entered the Little League World Series the following year as Taiwan’s first representatives at the competition. They won the championship. As if from nowhere, youth baseball was a major event in Taiwanese public life.1 Despite the continuing popularity of baseball in Taiwan— including a domestic professional league, participation in the Olympic games, and high- profile players arriving in the US major leagues— the Hongye team remains the most well- known sports team in Taiwanese history and one of the most fascinating sports teams to study for academics drawn to modern sport in East Asia. The team’s signature victory was more than an opportunity for Cold War propaganda grasped by the Republic of China (ROC) government: it signaled a transition in the role of baseball in Taiwanese popular culture from that of a remaining vestige of Japanese colo-nial influence to a representation of Chinese nationalism.

It is interesting that this transition did not occur earlier, with Taiwan’s return to the auspices of the ROC in 1945 following Japan’s defeat in World War II. Academics frequently discuss sport in terms of its value in promot-ing political ideologies from the top down in colonial and postcolonial soci-eties. Taiwan is no exception.2 Other approaches make the convincing argu-ment that popular sport offered local communities an avenue of resistance within the dominant current of the colonizing nation’s cultural assault.3 This understanding of sport in colonial and postcolonial contexts can also be lim-iting. Indeed, Taiwanese youth baseball offers us an alternative model: that

Harney: Youth Baseball in Taiwan 21

of a sporting community directly representing the colonial culture of Japa-nese seeking to live as members of the extended imperial Japanese cultural demesne. This cultural enclave must be understood separately from binary interpretations of ideological indoctrination and subtle resistance. Popular sport, baseball in this case, gives us insight into the relationship between the core and periphery of the colonial world and the detritus that remains follow-ing their severance.4

A Brief History of Taiwan as Colony and Refuge

Japan successfully colonized Taiwan in 1895 following a comprehensive vic-tory in the Sino- Japanese War of that year. Taiwanese colonial life settled into a relatively comfortable pattern of compromise between a landed Japanese elite group and ethnic Chinese locals after an initial period of bloody conflict, though aboriginal communities on the island continued to offer significant violent resistance.5 The colonial Japanese settled mostly around the newly formed colonial government in the northern city of Taipei. Further south, ethnic Chinese communities predominated alongside vestiges of the paci-fied aboriginal society. Taiwan was not bereft of opposition to colonial rule, but relations between the Japanese colonial government and local Taiwanese remained remarkably conciliatory in comparison with Japanese experience in Korea following the colonization of that country in 1910. Improvements in the local infrastructure and limited political concessions contributed to a rela-tively placid political environment in colonial Taiwan.6

Japanese approaches to integrating the local Taiwanese population into a wider imperial Japanese identity oscillated between assimilation and coexis-tence. This latter policy prevailed during the early decades of colonization, but Tokyo’s growing interest in assimilating the local population accelerated from the 1920s onwards. Still, though the Japanese language was fervently promoted, Chinese became a proscribed tongue only in the 1930s with the increasing militarization of government and society back in Japan. Taiwan-ese baseball ironically declined during the final years of colonial rule as the Japanese sought to use the fields otherwise reserved for their favorite sport for military exercises. Otherwise, the sport prospered, a sign of Japanese success in dominating the character of colonial Taiwanese culture.

Taiwan returned to Chinese control in 1945 following the end of World War II, only to swiftly become a refuge for a defeated government. Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist forces prevailed in the Chinese Civil War, proclaiming the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The defeated nationalist forces took up residence in Taiwan, where nationalist leader Chiang Kai- shek established

NINE Vol. 22.122

martial law and planned his return to the mainland. The ROC government exercised strict control over public associations, the media, and education with a mind to promoting specific models of Chinese identity.7 Chiang’s per-sonal cultural conservatism and nationalist concerns over Japanese influences in Taiwanese society drove this approach, the centrally planned language pro-gram that sought to promote mandarin Chinese at the expense of local lan-guages is the most famous example of this.8 However, the ROC government also promoted basketball, a sport popular in mainland China, at the expense of baseball.

Taiwanese political society gradually evolved away from authoritarianism beginning in the 1970s, with multiparty politics emerging in the 1980s and the country’s first popular election for the office of president in 1996. By this time, baseball had long returned to its status as a widely popular sport in Tai-wan, though it continues to share the limelight with basketball to this day. The return of baseball to wider cultural consciousness in 1968 necessitated government sponsorship. Prior to that, the sport persisted in the years follow-ing World War II as a shadow of its original form: an escarpment of Japanese popular culture extended out into its former colonial hinterland.

Youth Baseball in the Colonial Period

Although it would be over a decade before schoolchildren themselves began to play baseball in large numbers, schools and colleges hosted the first orga-nized games on the island between adults attending night school classes. Therefore, although teams organized around corporate and professional enti-ties fueled the baseball boom of the 1910s, playing baseball on school fields was nothing new. Japanese officials gradually established a local version of the universal education system that had seen great success in their home coun-try, replacing the traditional Chinese schools that focused on literary study of the Chinese classics with western- influenced institutions that focused on practical vocations and included instruction in physical education.9 Colonial Japanese were intent on retaining advantages for their children over local Tai-wanese children whenever possible, despite legislation introduced in 1922 to integrate the student populations further. The education system continued to filter students into different career tracks, but the introduction of physical education and the steps taken to integrate colonial Japanese and local Taiwan-ese children saw significant results on the baseball diamond.

In 1906, personnel from the Taiwan Colonial Government High School and the National Language Normal School, an institution created for train-ing of secondary level teachers, played the first organized game. Over the next


few years, these two teams were joined in a three- way rivalry with East Gate Night School.10 The first record of a game between students themselves was reported in the Nichi Nichi Shimpo in 1908, when the Colonial Government High School hosted a game between fifth- year students and a team composed of third- and fourth- year students.11 However, for the most part, organized baseball in early colonial Taiwan was played by adult men, particularly by the employees and students of the three teams mentioned above, as well as by teams formed under the auspices of the “Sports Club” set up by the colonial police department in 1903.12 By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, larger numbers of privately- run clubs and representative teams for educational institutions had begun to emerge, leading to larger baseball tour-naments involving more players.13

By 1915, the Taiwanese Baseball Association had been formed, and baseball had acquired sufficient public support among the colonial Japanese commu-nity for the hosting of a large baseball tournament to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Taiwan becoming Japan’s first colony. Sixteen of the prominent adult teams throughout the colony merged into two all- star squads who com-peted against each other as Red and White teams over the course of the two- day tournament.14 However, youth baseball was still virtually non- existent on the pages of the official colonial newspaper. In fact, as more adult baseball clubs were organized across the colony, the once powerful High School Asso-ciation took a lower profile in the formal organization of the game. Baseball teams with various connections to educational institutions persisted, but the late 1910s became the province of adult male baseball teams centered on pri-vate and public sector organizations.15 References to high school teams pop-ulated by actual high school students are fleeting, though games featuring school employees drew passionate reactions from those students in atten-dance, such as the spectacle of “hundreds of youngsters crying tears of regret” due to their chosen team’s narrow loss.16

In 1920, the term “shōnen” first appeared in the pages of the Japanese- language newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimpo, in a brief regional byline on a base-ball game featuring a narrow win by Tainan No. 1 Primary School.17 The game was part of a wider tournament between primary schools held at Tainan Park Ground.18 A week later, the tournament continued with more games featuring schools in the Tainan area.19 References to young people (specifically boys) engaged in baseball activities began to proliferate. In some cases, this reflected the increasing popularity of the game following visits by Japanese university teams in the late 1910s and the upcoming tour by an American barnstorming team led by Herbert Harrison Hunter. Interest in this latter event drove the Nichi Nichi Shimpo to announce pricing for elementary student admission.20

NINE Vol. 22.124

In other cases, these references indicated increased public activity involving boys of varying ages participating in organized games. In April 1921, a “young citizens” game was played at New Park in Taipei, with photographs of a large crowd of onlookers and young boys awaiting a pitch under the watchful eye of an older umpire.21

That year saw the beginning of increased activity in youth baseball in Tai-wan that would persist through the end of colonial rule and into ROC rule. Before 1921, the activity by teachers and other personnel working in Taiwan-ese high schools established to educate the children of the colonial Japanese had spread beyond Taipei; Tainan High School held regular tournaments during the 1910s.22 However, it wasn’t until 1921 that youth baseball gained a significant public profile. The inaugural Taipei Secondary School Baseball Tournament was the first major tournament in the colony to feature young athletes exclusively. The tournament was held amidst a hubbub of summer baseball activity in the colonial capital featuring adult teams, such as the col-orfully named Diamond club and the Government- General team, and pitting three high schools against each other: Taipei High School, Taipei Commer-cial School, and Taipei Industrial School. After a significant victory for Taipei Industrial School by a score of 17– 7, the team lost to Taipei High School by a similarly large margin, 18– 10.23 Taipei High School went on to defeat Taipei Commercial School and become the first Taipei Secondary School baseball champions.24

The tournament persisted throughout the 1920s, only to be superseded by the All- Island Secondary School Baseball Tournament in 1923. What caused this explosion of interest in youth baseball? Politically, Taiwan had veered away from the early Japanese colonial gradualist policy of coexistence since 1918, when Governor- General Akashi Motojiro had begun to insist on an expan-sion of the colonial education system to provide more secondary- level oppor-tunities for the local Taiwanese population.25 Subsequent educational reforms under Akashi and later Governor- General Den Kenjiro would have ramifi-cations for the influx of local Taiwanese into high school baseball in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the meantime, the changing tone of Taiwan’s polit-ical atmosphere— from coexistence to a positive approach to assimilation— coincided with the increase in sporting events in public life. Sumo wrestling, tennis, and baseball occupied pride of place in the Japanese conviction to fur-ther develop a colonial sporting environment.

Youth baseball in Taiwan in the 1920s was an extension of the enthusi-asm for and formalization of the phenomenon in Japan. The Nichi Nichi Shimpo regularly featured young students in immaculate white baseball uni-forms, and bestowed tournament winners with victory wreaths reminiscent


of those awarded at high- profile games in the imperial homeland. Taipei No. 1 High School’s baseball team had a song of its own, imitating a common Jap-anese phenomenon.26 Although still in the shadow of the increasing num-ber of matches between adult teams in the early 1920s, references to youth baseball tournaments continued to grow.27 In 1922, only a few weeks before the beginning of the second- annual Taipei Secondary School Baseball Tour-nament, even notice of a smaller youth baseball event earned a small byline on the Nichi Nichi Shimpo front page.28 In contrast, the Taipei tournament itself received less coverage than the year before, somewhat lost in the news of a tournament featuring adult athletes under the auspices of the Taiwan-ese Baseball Association. Despite this, public interest and official support was sufficient to establish the first All- Island Secondary School Baseball Tourna-ment in 1923.29 Just prior to the beginning of the tournament that June, the Nichi Nichi Shimpo carried articles covering the third- annual Taipei tourna-ment and a composite of two photographs showing young students engaged in sumo wrestling and baseball. Both photographs showed large crowds in attendance.30

The summer of 1923 saw more articles in the Nichi Nichi Shimpo focused on youth baseball than at any time before. The first- annual All- Island Sec-ondary School Baseball Tournament failed to stir the enthusiasm that might greet a visit from an established Japanese team like Waseda University, but the newspaper nonetheless tracked the tournament’s progress. The first tour-nament ostensibly open to all teams on the island proved essentially to be an expansion of the Taipei tournament, featuring three Taipei teams (Taipei No. 1 High School, Taipei Industrial School, and Taipei Commercial School) and one from Tainan (Tainan No. 1 High School).31 Over two days, all four teams competed in a single- elimination tournament, with Taipei No. 1 High School emerging victorious after defeating Tainan No. 1 High School in the final.32 Taipei No. 1 High School enjoyed considerable support from fans attending the games at New Park Stadium in Taipei. The winning squad posed for the newspaper’s camera in front of the scoreboard with their victory wreath.33 The newspaper also delivered a detailed account of all three championship games before reminding readers that the winner of this tournament would go forth to represent Taiwan at the National High School Tournament at Koshien Sta-dium in Japan.34

Initially, the Nichi Nichi Shimpo covered the trip enthusiastically. In early August, the newspaper featured a picture of the young athletes looking excit-edly to the cameras from the decks of the boat taking them to Japan.35 Unfor-tunately for the boys, they were easily defeated by Ritsumeikan High School in their first game and progressed no further in the competition.36 Their return

NINE Vol. 22.126

to Taipei was noted quietly.37 Despite their inability to make much of a mark in the national tournament in Japan, Taipei No. 1 High School’s admission to the tournament confirmed youth baseball’s role as a cultural bridge between Japan and its first colony. Taiwan’s still- developing framework for youth base-ball competition now filtered into one representative place at a “national” tournament covering the entire Japanese empire. By 1925, the colony’s main newspaper anticipated the All- Island Secondary School Baseball Tournament, noting that the tournament winner earned a spot at the Asahi Shimbun- sponsored national tournament at Koshien, which earned its own headline in anticipation of the All- Island Tournament kicking off a few days later.38 In fact, the tournament was now explicitly referred to as a preliminary qualifica-tion for the national finals themselves. The paper carried detailed stories on the tournament’s two days of action, including a photograph of Taipei Indus-trial School’s captain accepting a winner’s pennant and the adolescent players standing at attention for the camera’s recording of their auspicious victory.39 The young men proudly posed for more pictures in Japan, with one large pho-tograph that appeared in the Nichi Nichi Shimpo of the high schoolers attired in white baseball uniforms with a large crowd behind them.40 Coverage of their result, another early loss, was again muted.41

The hype surrounding the Taipei No. 1 High School team that represented the colony at Koshien in 1930 highlights differences in the presentation of youth baseball in Taiwan between the 1920s and the 1930s. The latter decade featured considerably more local Taiwanese children competing in the game at a level considered noteworthy by the colony’s main newspaper. Just days before Taipei No. 1 High School set off for Japan in 1930, Taipei hosted an All- Island Youth Baseball Tournament for teams from primary- level schools around the colony. The children were welcomed in an evening tea party at the Railroad Hotel in Taipei, and the tournament earned considerable cover-age in the newspaper, including a full layout of the fixture list.42 Participation by local Taiwanese was more conspicuous in this tournament than it was in the secondary schools competition, thanks to the participation of Taiwanese common schools. The children from these schools attracted curious coverage from the Nichi Nichi Shimpo, the paper choosing to display two large photo-graphs of the team from Gaoxiong No. 1 Common School: the upper photo-graph showed a group of bemused if not bewildered local Taiwanese children squatting on the floor with their luggage; the lower photograph showed the same group in their official team photo, a group of children in sparkling white uniforms standing at attention beside a championship pennant.43 The chil-dren got to the semifinal round of the tournament, itself the subject of heavy


coverage from the Nichi Nichi Shimpo, reflecting the official addition of the “All- Island” prefix to the tournament’s name, having simply been described as a Taipei- based tournament the year before.44

The emergence of baseball teams from schools dominated by local Tai-wanese students did not dilute the dominance of colonial Japanese student- athletes in Taipei. Nor did it dilute the place of baseball in Taiwanese culture within a colonial Japanese context. Despite the increased popularity of youth baseball in the colony, organized competitions between formally organized amateur clubs still held much of the Nichi Nichi Shimpo’s attention. Further-more, although the success of the All- Island tournament— held to select a Taiwanese participant for the national competition— had spawned another stand- alone tournament for youth baseball each January, such games were easily overshadowed by another high- profile visit from a Japanese baseball team.45 In Taiwan’s final years as a Japanese colony, baseball continued in the public eye much as it had in the 1920s, with youth baseball comprising a major part of the sport’s public presence domestically, although Japanese influence remained predominant.

In the early years, Taiwanese representatives were little more than fodder in early rounds of the national tournament at Koshien. All of this changed in 1931 when the kano team, a multiethnic squad hailing from the city of Jiayi in central Taiwan, reached the final.46 Their performance far surpassed the achievements of previous Taiwanese representatives at the national tourna-ment. The kano team had been competing in the annual All- Island tourna-ment since 1928, benefitting from the growth of youth baseball in the colony throughout the 1920s. Schools in the south of the colony with predominantly local Taiwanese lineups had already begun to emerge.47 By 1931, the presence of aboriginal Taiwanese players on the highly successful kano team was given equal merit to the presence of Taiwanese and Japanese players, as the kano team received plaudits for representing the colony’s multiethnic composition and proving on the field that all races could work together towards a common goal.48 It was a notable shift from the aboriginal Taiwanese people’s status as either the subject of intense Japanese sociological curiosity or the source of violent opposition in the first twenty years of the twentieth century.49

kano’s popularity in the Japanese- controlled press could be no accident of course. The emergence of this sports team featuring young adults from a Japanese colony coming together in racial harmony to excel in a sport taught to them by the Japanese was extremely valuable for imperial propaganda. Here was ample evidence of the colonial mission’s success. The more immedi-ate result of kano’s success affected the baseball community in Taiwan. The

NINE Vol. 22.128

media’s full- throated support of the team’s travels in Japan revealed more than official approval at the apparent realization of imperialist propaganda; it high-lighted the investment the local baseball community placed in kano’s suc-cess. This community had developed in tandem with influences radiating from Japan, establishing baseball as a sport both in the amateur adult scene and in the schools, as had already happened in Japan. The Taiwanese base-ball community established all- island tournaments for the best high school teams, mimicking the emergence of the Koshien tournament in Japan. Send-ing representatives to Koshien empowered the Taiwanese baseball commu-nity by creating a definitive link between the sporting community that had developed in Taiwan and the sporting community in Japan that had led to its creation. The kano team’s performance was a victory for Taiwanese baseball, an opportunity for the Taiwanese baseball community to hold its head high within the broader imperial Japanese community. Baseball did not provide an escape from Japanese cultural identity or a path to some vaguely defined mul-tiethnic Taiwanese identity independent of Japanese influence. It provided an opportunity to celebrate colonial Taiwanese achievement within the imperial cultural Japanese identity.

By the final days of Japanese imperial control of Taiwan, when references to baseball in the public media were reduced to brief announcements of games fitted in around the demands of war, baseball was an established feature in colonial public life.50 Japanese influence dominated the formal organization of the game, and the presentation of its competition and athletes in the public media, and it had done so for the entirety of baseball’s growth during the colo-nial period. In addition to the extensive practice and popularity of adult ama-teur baseball in Taiwan, particularly in Taipei, youth baseball also flourished in the context of Japanese dominance. Games between youths were played at an impressive network of stadiums established by the colonial government for the purpose of encouraging more physical activity in public life.51 Teams representing secondary- level educational institutions participated in compe-titions open to teams from all over the colony, although often from the Tai-pei area in practice. From the first organized games played by teachers to the more sophisticated competitions between school teams to choose a Taiwanese envoy to national championship games in Osaka or Kobe, youth baseball per-formed an important role in the development of the sport and the evolution of baseball as a public participatory activity in Taiwan. Moreover, baseball reflected an extension of Japanese culture into its colony, a process that could not simply be reversed by the return of the island to ROC control in 1945.


The Hongye Victory

The postwar ROC regime did not openly support youth baseball to the extent that the colonial Japanese government had before the island’s return to Chi-nese control. Before 1945, youth baseball in Taiwan reflected the high profile of high- school- level competition in Japan. By the early 1950s, when the domes-tic political situation had become relatively calm, the Lianhe Bao reports on youth baseball revealed a large network of interschool tournaments across the island. However, newspaper accounts of youth baseball declined as the 1950s progressed. In addition to the scant coverage of local baseball activity, the occasional editorial delivered a rather frank view of the sport’s importance in ROC society. One such newspaper article discussing the author’s recent visit to Tokyo to compare life there after the war with his previous visit in 1940 described streets filled with people gathered to watch baseball games on television, the gathered Japanese smiling and emitting sounds of enthusiasm or frustration to match the events portrayed on television, at once “express-ing passion and also expressing lunacy.” The author pondered what the reader might make of all this as a travelling Chinese person on the streets of Tokyo, concluding that the typical reaction would be one of boredom and incompre-hension.52 Mention of the sport’s existence— beyond justification for the con-tinued activity of a national team in international competition— was restricted to occasional references to the sporting infrastructure left behind by the Japa-nese. New Park remained, although it was more likely to be referenced as the site for celebrations showcasing students’ science projects than as the host of an organized youth baseball game.53

Despite the Lianhe Bao’s reluctance to report on the game, youth base-ball survived. Competitions reminiscent of the heyday of youth baseball dur-ing the colonial period persisted, although the sport suffered from the ROC regime’s preference for sports imported from the mainland. By the end of the 1950s, reports of sporting activities among Taiwanese youth were no longer dominated by baseball, with references to basketball and table tennis. There were also signs of baseball’s position in popular culture broadening slightly: female student athletes now played in competitions of their own, as evi-denced by the existence of an all- female tournament sharing top billing with the traditional all- male tournament in the Taipei Mayor’s Cup.54 Baseball— particularly youth baseball— had been subsumed into a postwar Taiwanese culture that celebrated sporting activity among young people as a collected set of vague activities resulting in the increased physical health and well- being of young Chinese citizens. This had been nominally true during the colonial period, but, in practice, baseball had risen to the forefront of colonial Taiwan’s

NINE Vol. 22.130

sporting culture. In postwar Taiwan, the only time baseball merited mention in the news was when it related to the ROC— for example, in international competitions with other Asian nations or in interactions between the ROC and American armed forces on the island, such as a friendly game between an American team and a team representing the ROC Air Force.55

Youth baseball tournaments such as the Chairman’s Cup received minimal coverage with none of the detailed accounts of tournaments from colonial times.56 If one was to go solely by the evidence presented in the pages of the Lianhe Bao, one would believe that baseball had simply emerged alongside basketball and volleyball as one of many sports utilized by the state to moti-vate and energize the young citizens of the republic. Baseball games that had enjoyed central coverage under Japanese rule were lost in the crowd of offi-cially sanctioned sporting activities promoted to keep children active during their summer vacation.57 In 1952, the central city of Jiayi hosted the second- annual Provincial High School Sports Championships. The games were open to teams representing universities, high schools, and elementary schools in both all- male and all- female competition. Such tournaments, previously holding baseball as the centerpiece, now included a wide number of sports. The Jiayi Forestry and Agriculture Institute that had once produced the kano baseball teams now provided champions in the one hundred meter sprints and one hundred ten meter hurdles.58 Even in the south of the island, home to emerging local Taiwanese student athletes towards the end of the colo-nial period, the game was lost amid a governmental commitment to blanket all sports as part of a drive to promote feelings of nationalist loyalty among Taiwanese youth. Meetings such as those hosted by the Liu Dui Nationalist Friendship Organization, a group created shortly after the arrival of the ROC government to celebrate Hakka culture in the south of Taiwan, included a wide variety of sports with no special mention of baseball.59

Acknowledgement of the sport’s prevalence in Taiwan prior to the nation-alist retreat in the late 1940s was rare, as the newspaper ignored the infra-structure of organized baseball left behind by Japanese political control. The only recognition of the relationship between the island’s most popular sport and colonial rule came in oblique references, such as an article written to showcase the novelty of two elderly chess masters postponing a formal contest by thirty minutes to watch half an hour of the Japanese High School Cham-pionship game at Koshien on television. The article helpfully reminded the reader that the Koshien tournament was “the most popular sporting event in Japan.”60 Visits by the Waseda University baseball team were similarly obfus-cated, referring to a past which all Taiwanese residents on the island before 1945 were aware of but which the newspaper chose not to approach directly.


Coverage of the first postwar visit by Waseda in 1953 included a brief opinion piece that took a dim view of the Japanese players’ reception at Songshan Air-port and the unreserved enthusiasm of ROC citizens who identified them-selves as members of the Waseda Alumni Society. The newspaper accepted that on such “major diplomatic occasions” it may not hurt to show open friendliness to foreign guests, but warned against behavior when lost in the moment as a “brother or sister fan” that may give a negative impression of Taiwanese society.61 Despite such official attitudes, the eventual postwar re- emergence of Taiwanese youth baseball into the national limelight came in large part thanks to a contest between Taiwanese and Japanese teams.

The Hongye team originated in a small village in Taidong. The village, named after the autumn colors of its scenic surroundings, was home to sev-eral households of the Bunun aboriginal Taiwanese tribe. In September 1963, Lin Zhupeng became principal of the village’s small elementary school. The school was having trouble attracting the Bunun children to regular atten-dance. Noting the enthusiasm among the children for outdoor pursuits, Lin formed a baseball team with the hopes of attracting consistently truant stu-dents to attend class.62 The principal’s faith in the children’s ability quickly paid dividends, as the new team secured first place in the Taidong County Head Cup only a year later.63 In 1965, the team made its first appearance in the pages of the Lianhe Bao. The article was a human interest story recounting efforts to raise enough money for the young athletes to attend the seventeenth- annual Students’ Baseball Tournament in Taipei. The ten children on the team were faced with no available option of attending the tournament, as there was already a team in attendance representing Taidong county, and there were no more public funds available for a trip by another team. The article described the children’s passion for baseball that motivated them to travel to Taipei for the tournament regardless, first travelling up the east coast to Hualian from Taidong by foot and then negotiating a lift by car on to Yilan, where their trip finally seemed at an end, with the children pacing the streets without a place to stay or any finances to proceed further. The story had a happy ending: Mr. Huang Xunzuo, a local policeman, discovered the group and was so moved and saddened by their plight and determination to travel to Taipei on a mea-ger diet of soy milk and mantou bread buns that he provided a roof over their heads and persuaded local Yilan residents to donate to the cause. The Hon-gye team reached Taipei, where they finished fourth and earned a place in the hearts of many fans.64

The article clearly offered plenty of propaganda opportunities, stressing the admirable tenacity of these young children from the most rural section of Taiwan as well as the generosity of business owners and other members of the

NINE Vol. 22.132

growing middle class in Yilan, such as the purveyors of the Mainland Restau-rant, who fed the children during the tournament. Of course, the kindness of the friendly and sympathetic Officer Huang did not reflect badly on the gov-ernment either. Situated at the center of this tale of generosity befitting tradi-tional Chinese cultural values surviving the island’s steady economic growth, the Hongye team was little more than a justification for the article’s moral message. The Students’ Cup itself did not merit the newspaper’s attention. The Lianhe Bao’s steadfast refusal to treat baseball in Taiwan as anything other than an avenue for participation in international cultural exchanges resulted in the absence of in- depth youth baseball coverage in the popular media. This changed radically in 1968.

The Hongye team earned their next mention in the Lianhe Bao when financial difficulties loomed once more as the boys attempted to travel to Tai-pei to represent their country at the Students’ Baseball Tournament. Helpful Taiwanese attached to the school pitched in once more, and the children were praised for their attitude. It was also noted that they came from a school that lacked a second or fourth grade class and required only five people to teach classes and run the school.65 This time, however, the Hongye team also made headlines for its performances on the field. A sterling performance against Yongle Elementary School in Taipei, featuring three home runs in the sixth inning, earned plaudits for this team with “strengths in abundance.”66 After years of ignoring youth baseball in favor of covering adult international tour-naments, the Lianhe Bao now spoke of the twentieth- annual Students’ Base-ball Tournament in glowing terms. “Since the tournament began six days ago,” the paper gushed, “there has not been a single cold day in the stadium.” The quality of the teams and players present at the tournament led the newspaper to assess the nation’s baseball potential, concluding that a shining opportunity existed to significantly improve the fortunes of the national team in the future. Hongye players were picked out as the representatives of an exceptional Tai-wanese county, Taidong, in the production of baseball talent.67 The article noticeably ignored the sport’s colonial roots, instead stressing the exceptional nature of Taidong’s ability to produce baseball talent, celebrating the physical capabilities and achievements of Chinese youth, and openly praising govern-ment efforts the year before in hosting an aboriginal Taiwanese sports tourna-ment to develop talent in eastern Taiwan.

The shift in tone and increase in number of articles in the Lianhe Bao cov-ering youth baseball in 1968 is startling. There had been a gradual upturn in attention towards youth baseball in previous years. Taipei held its first Pri-vate Schools Baseball Tournament in 1967, and scattered reports betrayed the continued proliferation of various youth baseball tournaments, such as


the second- annual All- County Youth Baseball Cup in Yilan in 1966, despite a lack of coverage beyond announcements of fixtures.68 The previous year’s Students’ Baseball Tournament had barely earned a mention, with a cursory announcement of teams involved but no editorial comment or articles follow-ing up on the winners of the tournament. One could argue that the hosting of the tournament in Pingdong, a relatively secluded city to the south, might explain some of the lack of attention compared to the following year when Hongye received so much attention for performances in the capital, but the differences in media coverage are remarkable.69 The Hongye victory at the Students’ Baseball Tournament in 1968, topped off with a “beautiful” home run to win the game, was lauded for the children’s diligence in training and for their emergence from difficult economic conditions thanks to the support of the entire county of Taidong.70 The boys now symbolized the power of hard work and the availability of opportunity in the steadily strengthening Taiwan-ese economy.71

Clearly, many factors fed into the team’s popularity and the willingness of the Lianhe Bao to publicize sporting activities it had virtually ignored for almost twenty years. Yet again, a team of aboriginal Taiwanese boys captured the imagination of the political heartland of Taipei. The team’s three- year record in island- wide competition also spoke to the children’s skill. Finally, the Hongye successes fit neatly into a heartwarming success story, proof that even in economically depressed Taidong, the new advances of Chinese society and the economy in Taiwan offered opportunities to those willing to work hard to take them. The Lianhe Bao repeatedly harped on the economic difficul-ties facing the team, including difficulties securing the necessary equipment.72 The team’s attitude regularly came to the fore. The children’s background in a small provincial school with only one hundred and twenty students was frequently referenced, and their spectacular success on the field— winning two championships in three years— was made possible by a determination expressed in the team’s motto that “if there is a way, we will do it!”73

The attention is fascinating as it came months before Hongye’s exhibition game against the Japanese Little League team that has since established the Taidong children’s place in history. The increased coverage supports Yu Jun-wei’s contention that, far from being a pioneer in Taiwanese baseball, Hongye merely represented the latest and most successful step forward for youth base-ball.74 The progress of youth baseball in Taiwan under the ROC government, though not as heavily publicized as during the colonial era, continued in the proliferation of teams and tournaments throughout the island. As a highly successful team with a media- friendly backstory, Hongye became genuinely popular. The tone of the coverage supports Andrew Morris’s view that the

NINE Vol. 22.134

ROC government leaped at the chance to promote such a popular example of “capitalist spirit” unique to the island’s growing economy.75 It was a happy marriage of ROC propaganda aims and a genuine historical tradition of youth baseball on the island. Yu and Morris are completely correct to point to the summer games against the visiting Japanese Little Leaguers as the transfor-mative event that made the Hongye team legendary in Taiwan. The Hongye victory became a major social event, thanks to the decades- long cultivation of a baseball tradition, the impact of television coverage, the political aims of a government seeking a propaganda victory over a fellow sovereign state, and the legacy of Taiwanese moral victories against Japanese teams during colo-nial times.76 However, the intense coverage of the Hongye victories earlier in the year shows that these boys had already created a space in the government- controlled public realm for youth baseball that had previously been denied.

In fact, media coverage was so cozy that the Hongye players visited the Lianhe Bao offices, the occasion and accompanying speeches happily reported in the newspaper’s pages, with newspaper publisher Wang Yiwu donating baseball gloves to each of the children.77 Only a few weeks later, Taiwan Sport-ing Association Council head Xie Guocheng announced that an invitation had been accepted by a Japanese team. The visitors would play three games in Taipei, against an all- Taiwan team, Hongye and Chuiyi, the latter team losers to Hongye in the 1968 Students’ Tournament championship game. The visi-tors would bring a roster of fifteen players, and the exhibition games were to adhere to strict rules as enforced in Taiwanese baseball competitions. All play-ers were to be under the age of twelve. The newspaper named the visiting team as the 1967 Little League World Series champions.78 The hype overlooked the fact that this wasn’t strictly true: the 1967 team had hailed from Wakayama in Kansai, but that team could not accurately be equated with the visiting Kan-sai team. The two squads had only one player in common. Nevertheless, the arrival of such an accomplished youth baseball side drove anticipation.79

The games were a major media event, particularly the eagerly awaited showdown between Hongye and the visiting Japanese team. Physical exami-nations for the boys from Taidong and the announcement of a reserve roster in case of injury were photographed by attending reporters.80 The team played a lengthy series of warm- up games up and down the country.81 A summer visit by the baseball team from Aichi University in Japan was completely over-shadowed by coverage of Hongye’s preparation; even the announcement of the university side’s arrival and list of fixtures for their trip to Taiwan was sup-plemented by another reminder of the Japanese Little League team’s impend-ing visit and confirmation of the local teams’ rosters.82 The hype did not let up throughout the summer, with Hongye piling win upon win against domestic


opposition.83 The children duly delivered, solidly defeating the Japanese visi-tors by a score of 7– 0 in front of more than twenty thousand spectators in Tai-pei. “Chasing the Clouds, Hongye Take Flight” crowed the Lianhe Bao, before journalist Zhao Gongsong gleefully lost himself describing the decisive vic-tory. The children took a victory lap of the stadium to express their thanks to the fans in attendance as Zhao made a play on words using the Chinese characters of the team name to describe the legendary scene, describing the children on the lap of honor as “they appeared in their red colored uniforms as falling maple leaves in the dazzling sunlight.”84 On the same day, the news-paper openly asserted that Hongye had proven it was ready to travel to Japan itself and to enter the world of international Little League competition.85

The Hongye victory did just that, not just for the Taidong squad but for all Taiwanese elementary school teams. In 1969, the Taizhong Gold Dragon team became the first Taiwanese team to play at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, going on to win the tournament. Two years later, in 1971, the Tainan Giants became champions to continue the Taiwanese teams’ strong showings and kick start a four- year run of Taiwanese titles, heralding the beginning of more than a decade of Taiwanese dominance in interna-tional youth baseball.86 The Tainan Giants were feted as the Taiwanese media began to feast in earnest on the international successes of the country’s youth teams. One collection of articles and photographs celebrating the Giants’ suc-cess contained a piece with the headline “Japanese Youth Baseball Standards Already Five Years Behind Taiwan,” a direct quote from head Japanese youth baseball coach Suzuki Hidetoshi.87 The article barely concealed the pleasure Taiwanese baseball fans were expected to derive from the admission. The comparison with Japan painted the former imperial power as a foreign nation with an established history in organized baseball, while Taiwanese youngsters represented the product of Chinese innovation and hard work. There was no mention of the sport’s roots in the colonial period. For the increasingly iso-lated Taiwan, competition in the Little League World Series was an exciting foray into international exchanges with other nations, and a chance for those Chinese residing in America and loyal to the ROC to show their support for Chiang Kai- shek’s regime.88 The Tainan players were welcomed home by a victory parade with over ten thousand onlookers, each player photographed in suits and victory sashes, their status as national heroes assured.89

Conclusion

It would not always be so perfect. As Yu Junwei has pointed out, Taiwanese success in Little League World Series competition had a dark side— a will-

NINE Vol. 22.136

ingness to flaunt the rules of eligibility for players that dates back as far as Hongye’s domestic success before their landmark victory in 1968.90 Indeed, the ability of these young children from a different continent and culture to master the American pastime had a profound effect on the American base-ball community at the time, leading both to admiration and suspicion.91 It is important not to ignore such issues when discussing sporting events that the government- supported media willfully promoted to great effect. For our purposes, the importance lies in the fact that baseball had come to occupy such an important role in ROC propaganda both inside and outside Taiwan. The Hongye victory symbolizes a central point in narratives about Taiwanese political identities. For the government- controlled media that sought to publi-cize Hongye’s success, Little League baseball offered an avenue to high- profile events centered on international cultural exchange, notably those centered in the United States. Hongye’s signature victory over Japanese opponents in 1968 marked the beginning of a story that justified ROC political ideals and fur-thered the country’s international interactions. More recently, as the political climate in Taiwan allows interpretations of baseball’s history that can accept the Japanese legacy in bringing the sport to the island, the Hongye victory takes its place on a narrative arc joining the team’s successes with other nota-ble victories in Taiwanese baseball history, such as those of the Nenggao team in the 1920s and the various kano teams in the 1930s.92

A place for Hongye on a third narrative line places the team at the termi-nal point: as much as Hongye’s 1968 victory was a beginning for governmental recognition of youth baseball and the celebration of the sport as an expres-sion of Chinese (and later Taiwanese) nationalism, it was the end of sport’s role as an extension of Japanese cultural identity dating back to 1906. Japa-nese authorities had been happy to see Taiwanese children embrace a sport so popular in Japan, to take part in a community that spanned imperial core and colonial satellite alike. However, youth baseball never became a direct route to the “Japanization” of local Taiwanese. Rather, it created a cultural community centered on baseball that celebrated Japanese values and measured its suc-cesses in terms defined by the baseball community in Japan. kano’s achieve-ment in reaching the final at Koshien in 1931 was a massive success for the Tai-wanese baseball community, the team itself the subject of transposed hopes and dreams of colonial Japanese organizers of youth baseball in Taipei. More local Taiwanese filtered into playing the game through the framework offered by organized youth baseball, so much so that these traditions continued after the return of the ROC government in 1945. Taiwanese baseball continued as an extension of a broader Japanese cultural identity relegated by a Chinese government that showed no interest in stamping it out, as it did the Japanese


language, but that also declined to promote the game as a political tool for Chinese nationalism.

After 1968, there was no ambiguity about the political implications of each Taiwanese victory in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Success on the field had become an important tool of political propaganda, and the political sys-tem had finally turned its attention to manipulating the popularity of base-ball in Taiwan. Youth baseball specifically offered the ROC government this opportunity. The main reasons for the Hongye team’s existence and its ability to perform so well against Japanese opposition were not rooted in the play-ers’ positive attitude or any inherent Chinese characteristics of hard work and entrepreneurial endeavor. These reasons were rooted in a sport defined by Japanese cultural assumptions that had developed for decades. Local Tai-wanese, so long relegated to the position of on- field talent competing for the benefit of colonial Japanese organizers, assumed control of the baseball com-munity on their island immediately following the end of World War II. The influence of Japanese imperial culture, despite the relative brevity of Taiwan’s tenure as a colony, could not simply be turned off as one flicks a light switch. Neither could the ROC government’s ideals be immediately and directly imposed, resulting in baseball suddenly becoming an expression of reawak-ened Chinese nationalism. Ultimately, we are left with the simple truth that the collision of cultural influences in Taiwan during its fifty years as a Japa-nese colony left a large array of political, cultural, and linguistic marks upon the reality of Taiwanese life. Baseball is central among these, highlighting the difficulties in analyzing the cultural relationship between an empire and its colony, and leading us beyond binary analyses of cultural indoctrination and proto- nationalist resistance.

Notes

1. Liu Dui Hakka County Records Committee, Liu Dui Hakka Sociocultural Devel-opment and Evolution Research: Art and Culture Edition (Pingdong: Liudui Cultural Education Foundation, 2001), 483.

2. Joseph A. Reaves, Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia (Lincoln: Uni-versity of Nebraska Press, 2004), 138– 41.

3. Andrew Morris, Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 24– 29.

4. The research undertaken for this article makes extensive use of periodicals. Two newspapers are particularly prominent: Japanese language Taiwan Nichi Nichi Shimpo (Taiwan Daily Newspaper) and Chinese language Lianhe Bao (United Daily News). Both periodicals were the subject of significant government influence during the historical periods being discussed. The Nichi Nichi Shimpo, published for almost

NINE Vol. 22.138

the entirety of the colonial period, was partly owned by the colonial government and reflected a distinctly Japanese view of events in Taiwan. The Lianhe Bao enjoyed a similarly close relationship with the ROC government during the postwar period.

Each publication’s obvious editorial agenda offers historians a significant chal-lenge, though it also presents opportunities. Clearly, officially sponsored accounts of events in each period (or accounts so loyal to the respective regime that they are indis-tinguishable from direct sponsorship) must be taken with a grain of salt. However, official attitudes towards baseball both before and after World War II mitigate this problem. The Japanese, particularly in the early decades of colonial rule, had limited interest in permitting local Taiwanese to participate in the growing baseball commu-nity on the island, preferring to restrict its practice to colonial Japanese. The base-ball community in Taiwan never lost this defining Japanese influence. The sport thus received significant coverage relatively free of ideological hyperbole aimed to cajole, convert, or convince the local population. The Lianhe Bao echoed the ROC govern-ment approach of overlooking baseball whenever possible, with the notable exception of reporting on baseball contests involving American servicemen and occasional arti-cles on the popularity of the game in nearby Japan.

These periodicals present us with official attitudes toward baseball at a time when officialdom exercised significant control over acceptable components of popular cul-ture in the public realm. Furthermore, such sources are often intriguing because of the manner in which they choose to present specific events. For example, the Nichi Nichi Shimpo’s clear support for teams composed either partially or entirely of local Taiwan-ese athletes suggests that Japanese baseball enthusiasts in Taiwan felt far from threat-ened by the extension of the sport’s popularity beyond their own ethnic group. Simi-larly, the Lianhe Bao’s attempts to present baseball as a curious example of Japanese sporting culture and its studious ignorance of the continuing popularity of the sport in Taiwan illuminates for us the extent of the ROC government’s desire to suppress baseball’s popularity prior to 1968.

5. For more detail on aboriginal resistance to Japanese rule, see Paul R. Katz, When Valleys Turned Blood Red: The Ta- pa- ni Incident in Colonial Taiwan (Honolulu: Uni-versity of Hawai’i Press, 2005).

6. Denny Roy, Taiwan: A Political History (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 2003), 38– 45.

7. Edwin A. Winckler, “Cultural Policy on Postwar Taiwan,” in Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan, ed. Stevan Harrell and Chun- chieh Huang (Taipei: smc Publishing, 1994), 37– 42.

8. Ping Chen, “Chapter Five: Policy on the Selection and Implementation of a Stan-dard Language as a Source of Conflict in Taiwan,” in Language Planning and Language Policy: East Asian Perspectives, ed. Nanette Gottlieb and Ping Chen (Richmond: Cur-zon Press, 2001), 95– 110, 102.


9. E. Patricia Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 1895– 1945 (Cam-bridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1977), 17– 18.

10. Yu Junwei, ed., Taiwan Bangqiu Bainianshi: Xuan Dong Sui Yue (Taipei: Zhong-hua Minguo Bangqiu Xiehui, 2006), 13– 14.

11. “Chuugakkō Yakyuu Shiai” [Secondary School Baseball Game], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, April 25, 1908.

12. See for example “Shimotsuki tai Gakushuu Yakyuu Shiai” [Baseball Game between Eleventh Month Club and Tutors Association], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, Decem-ber 3, 1907.

13. See “Daiichi Kai Yakyuu Rengō Shiai” [The First Baseball Combined Games], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 11, 1908. The Eleventh Month Club, Colonial High School, and the High School Association were among the teams to participate.

14. “Kinen Yakyuu Daikai” [Anniversary Baseball Tournament], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, June 9, 1915.

15. The cb club, for example, became quite prominent in the latter years of the 1910s. See “Kinou no Yakyuu Sen: cb Jyuu Ten Zaibu Go Ten” [Yesterday’s Baseball Game: cb Ten Runs, Financial Five Runs], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, January 23, 1916 ; and “Gakujidan Katsu” [University Graduate Team Wins], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, October 29, 1916.

16. “Tainan Yakyuu Sōha Sen” [Tainan Competitive Game], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, October 22, 1917.

17. The term shōnen, literally “juveniles” or “young boys,” appears as an ubiquitous prefix for all articles in the Nichi Nichi Shimpo discussing youth baseball and is heavily used by other Chinese and Japanese language sources. “Tainan: Shōnen Yakyuu Shiai” [Tainan: Young Boys’ Baseball Game], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, December 7, 1920.

18. “Shōnen Yakyuu Daikai” [Young Boys’ Baseball Tournament], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, December 7, 1920.

19. “Tainan Shōnen Yakyuu Daikai” [Tainan Boys Baseball Tournament], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, December 14, 1920.

20. “Shōgakusei to Yakyuu Nyuujyō Ryō” (Baseball Admission Prices for Elemen-tary School Students), Nichi Nichi Shimpo, January 8, 1921.

21. “Shō Kokumin no Yakyuu Shiai” [Young Citizens’ Baseball Game], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, April 4, 1921.

22. Yoshitomo Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi (Himeji: Onokousoku Insatsu Kabushiki Kaisha, 1996), 6– 7.

23. “Daiyamondo Yakyuu Senshu” [Diamond Baseball Athletes], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, June 2, 1921; “Honjitsu Yakyuu Sen: Tokufudan tai Isen” [Today’s Baseball Game: Government Team vs. Medical Students], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, June 8, 1921; “Kōgyōgun Taishousu” [Industrial Team’s Large Victory], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, June 5, 1921; and “Kinō no Yakyuu Sen: Chuugakugun Daishōsu” [Yesterday’s Baseball Game: High School Team is Victorious], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, June 8, 1921.

NINE Vol. 22.140

24. Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi, 8– 10.25. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, 81– 85.26. Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi, 106; and Rantei Shōin, Gakkō

Kashuu (Tokyo: Hōkō Kai, 1910), 32– 33.27. “Shōnen Yakyuu Enki” [Youth Baseball Postponed], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, April

26, 1922.28. “Shōnen Yakyuu Daikai” (Youth Baseball Tournament), Nichi Nichi Shimpo,

May 6th, 1922.29. “Yakyuu Sōha ha Kinō Dainichi Ji Sen o Kaimaku” [Second Baseball Tourna-

ment Opened Yesterday], May 29, 1922.30. “Shōnen Yakyuu Daikai: Muika Shin Kōen de” [Youth Baseball Tournament:

At New Park on the Sixth], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, May 5th, 1923; and “Shōnen Yakyuu to Gakusei Sumō” [Youth Baseball and Student Sumo], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, May 14, 1923.

31. “Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Sōha Sen” [Secondary Level Schools Baseball Competi-tive Games], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, July 2, 1923.

32. Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi, 15– 16.33. Photographic Images, Nichi Nichi Shimpo, July 18, 1923, 9.34. “Yon Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Sen Inshō” [Four Secondary Schools Baseball

Game Impressions], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, July 18, 1923, 7.35. “Taihoku Daiichi Chuugakkō Yakyuu Senshu” [Taipei No.1 High School Ath-

letes], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 7, 1923.36. Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi, 17.37. “Bei Ichichuu Senshu Honjitsu Kaebei” [Taipei No. 1 Athletes Return to Taipei],

Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 25, 1923.38. “Zen Koku Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Daikai: Taiwan Yosenkai no Shutsujyoukō”

[National Secondary School Baseball Tournament: Taiwan Nomination’s Participating School], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, July 24, 1925.

39. “Zentō Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Yosen Daikai” [All- Island Secondary School Baseball Preliminary Tournament], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, July 27, 1925.

40. “Zen Koku Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Daikai no Kōshien ni Ukeru Taihoku Kōgyō no Nain” [Koshien of the National Secondary School Baseball Tournament Receives the Taipei Industrial School Nine], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 26, 1925.

41. Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi, 33.42. “Shōnen Yakyuu Shutsujyō no Senshu Shōtai Sawakai” [Youth Baseball Partici-

pating Athletes Invited to Tea Party], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 1, 1930; and “Shōnen Yakyuu Daikai Kumiawase Kettei” [Youth Baseball Tournament Fixtures Decided], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 2, 1930.

43. “Shōnen Yakyuudan Raibei” [Youth Baseball Team Comes to Taipei], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 1, 1930.

44. “Saigō no Shou Yakyuu Sen” [Latest Youth Baseball Games], Nichi Nichi


Shimpo, August 5, 1930; and “Sentō Shōnen Yakyuu Sen Gahō” [All- Island Youth Base-ball Game Pictorial], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 3, 1930. One of the photographs fea-tured a favorite of Nichi Nichi photographers when covering youth baseball games: an adult umpire towering over a diminutive catcher. See “Taihoku Shōnen Yakyuu Daikai Hido Enkō” [Taipei Youth Baseball Tournament Dates Revised], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, June 14, 1929.

45. “Taichuu ni Ukeru Zentō Chuutō Yakyuu Daikai” [Taizhong Receives All- Island Secondary School Tournament], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, January 5, 1933. In this instance, the coverage of the game was completely overshadowed by photographs and articles on the same page covering the second game of Keio University’s 1933 visit to Taiwan.

46. kano is an abbreviation referring to the Japanese kanji that became associ-ated with the team name. The players represented the Jiayi School of Agriculture and Forestry.

47. Yu, Taiwan Bangqiu Bainianshi, 34– 36.48. The kano team almost immediately set out on a victorious tour of Taiwan

upon the return from Japan. For coverage of another crushing victory (by a score of 8– 2) in Taizhong, see “Kanō gun wo mukahe” [Welcoming the Kano Team] Nichi Nichi Shimpo, September 28, 1931.

49. Young aboriginal Taiwanese children in bright clean baseball uniforms drew an entirely different picture from the typical group portrait of alien savages so popular with Japanese ethnographers. See Yuanzhumin Zhunbei Shoulie, “Aborines preparing for the outdoor hunt,” Taiwan Memory id No. 0000359156, 1921.

50. “Senbaikyoku no Yakyuu Shiai” [Monopoly Bureau Baseball Game], Nichi Nichi Shimpo, August 19, 1943.

51. Nishiwaki, Taiwan Chuutō Gakkō Yakyuu Shi, 2– 5.52. “Dongjing de Biaoqing” [The Look and Feel of Tokyo], Lianhe Bao, August 12,

1954, 2.53. “Qingnian Huodong: Chengji Pingding” [Student Activities Graded and

Judged], Lianhe Bao, March 30, 1956, 3.54. “Zhuoqiu JinBiaosai: Mingtian Chouqian. Shizhangbei Nubang Manshang

Guanjun” [Table Tennis Gold Medal Game: Lots Drawn Tomorrow. Manshang Cham-pions of Women’s Mayor’s Cup], Lianhe Bao, June 23, 1959, 3.

55. “Kongjun Bangqiu Jinglu” [Air Force Baseball Tour], Lianhe Bao, August 2, 1959, 3.

56. “Yixian Bangqiu Sai: Zuo Kaishi Juezhu” [Yilan County Baseball Game: Contest Began Yesterday], Lianhe Bao, August 26, 1966, 6.

57. “Zhongshi Siqian Qingnian Canjia Shuqi Huodong” [Four Thousand Taizhong Young People Participate in Summer Activities], July 27, 1965, 7.

58. Jiang Tianhui, ed., Jiayi Shizhi, (Jiayi: Jiayi City Government, 2002), 695.

NINE Vol. 22.142

59. Liu Dui Hakka County Records Committee, (Pingdong: Liudui Cultural Educa-tion Foundation, 2001), 474– 475.

60. “Liang Wei Daqishi Dou Shi Lao Qiumi” [Two Chess Masters are Old Fans], Lianhe Bao, August 21, 1967, 3.

61. “Heibaiji” [Black and White Collection], Lianhe Bao, December 19, 1953.62. Xie and Xie, Taiwan Banqiu Yi Bai Nian, 98.63. Renyuan Xie and Jiafen Xie, Taiwan Bangqiu Yibainian (Taipei: Guoshi Chu-

ban, 2003), 110.64. “Tongxin Bang: Xiaoxiao de Jie Dada de Wenqing” [Sympathy Bat: Little Ones’

Hunger Grown- up’s Warmth of Feeling], Lianhe Bao, April 27, 1965, 3.65. “Taidong Hongye Guoxiao Bangqiudui Huode Rexin Renshi Zizhu” [Taidong

Hongye Elementary School Baseball Team Secures Financial Support from Passionate People], Lianhe Bao, May 15, 1968, 6.

66. “Yichang Bangqiusai Sanzhi Quanleida Hongye Jiezuo Guanzhong Hecai” [Three Home Runs in One Baseball Game, Hongye Masterpiece, Audience Applauds], Lianhe Bao, May 18, 1968, 5.

67. “Hongye Bangqiu Yijun Jueqi Zhenxing Tiyu Haode Kaishi” [Hongye Baseball Distinguished Team Stands Out, Developed Physical Education a Good Start], Lianhe Bao, May 20, 1968, 6.

68. “Beishi Zhongxue Leisai” [Taipei High School Ballgame], Lianhe Bao, May 11, 1967, 5; and “Yixian Shaonian Bangsai Mingci Yi Pingding” [Yilan County Youth Base-ball Competition Participants Already Confirmed], Lianhe Bao, January 4, 1966, 6.

69. “Quansheng Xuetong Bangsai Zuo Zai Pingdong Jiemu” [Provincial Students Baseball Games Open Yesterday in Pingdong], Lianhe Bao, April 19, 1967, 2.

70. “Hongye Bu Fu Zhongwang Guoxiao Bangsai Chengwang” [Hongye Bear the Expectations of the Crowd to Become Elementary School Baseball Champions], Lianhe Bao, May 22, 1968, 6.

71. “Taidong Xiao Jiang Yi (Bang) Xiang Manshan (Hongye) Ya Chuiyi” [Taidong Little Ones in First Place, (Bat) County Mountain People (Hongye) Crush Chuiyi], Lianhe Bao, May 22, 1968, 3.

72. “Bu Duan Gengyun Bi You Shouhuo” [Continuously Cultivating, Must Receive Results], Lianhe Bao, May 15, 1968, 6.

73. “Xiao Shiqing, Da Qishi!” [Small Matter, Large Inspiration!], Lianhe Bao, May 23, 1968, 2.

74. Junwei Yu, Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (Lincoln: Uni-versity of Nebraska Press, 2007), 37– 38.

75. Morris, Colonial Project, National Game, 81– 86.76. Yu, Playing in Isolation, 41– 44.77. “Hongye Dui Fang Benbao Wang Yiwu Zeng Shoutao” [Hongye Team Visits

this Paper, Wang Yiwu Donates Glove], Lianhe Bao, May 23, 1968, 3.


78. “Ri Shaonian Bangqiudui Jieshou Fanghua Yaoqing” [Japanese Youth Baseball Team Accept Invitation to Visit China], Lianhe Bao, June 14, 1968, 6.

79. See Yu, Playing in Isolation, 40; and Morris, Colonial Project, National Game, 83.80. “Hongye Duiyuan Bei Zhimao Ming Dingti” [Hongye Reserve Players Named],

Lianhe Bao, June 19, 1968, 6.81. “Hongye Zuo Fang Zhongshi” [Hongye Visited Taizhong Yesterday], Lianhe

Bao, June 21, 1968, 6.82. “Ri Aihe Bangdui Jin Fanghua” [Japanese Aichi Baseball Team Visit China

Today], Lianhe Bao, July 5, 1968, 6.83. “Hongye Renxuan Qiuyuan Dingqi Beilai Jixun” [Hongye Players Confirm

Dates for Focused Training in Taipei], Lianhe Bao, July 12, 1968, 6; and “Hongye Zaisheng” [Hongye Win Again], Lianhe Bao, July 31, 1968, 6.

84. “Liuxing Bang, Zhui Yun Tui, Hongye Fanfei” [Popular Baseball, Chasing the Clouds, Hongye Take Flight], Lianhe Bao, August 26, 1968, 3.

85. “Boli Shushang: Hongye Zhansheng Yihou” [Attending Glass School: After the Hongye Victory], Lianhe Bao, August 26, 1968, 9.

86. Liu Dui Hakka County Records Committee, Liu Dui Hakka Sociocultural Development and Evolution Research: Art and Culture Edition (Pingdong: Liudui Cul-tural Education Foundation, 2001), 483– 84.

87. Zhonghua Shaonian Bangqiudui Fendoushi Bianyi Weiyuanhui, ed., Zhonghua Shaonian Bangqiudui Fendoushi (Taipei: Republic of China History and Culture Pub-lishing House, 1972), 133.

88. Weiyuanhui, Zhonghua Shaonian Bangqiudui Fendoushi, 42.89. Weiyuanhui, Zhonghua Shaonian Bangqiudui Fendoushi, 57– 61.90. Yu, Playing in Isolation, 44– 47.91. See for example Donald H. Shapiro, “Success Easily Explained for Taiwan Little

League” New York Times, Sept. 9, 1973. In making his admiration for the abilities of the Taiwanese teams clear, Shapiro takes the time to refute the growing concerns among the American Little League community regarding possible breaches of the rules by Taiwanese teams.

92. Those victories are not discussed in further detail here, though they will feature in upcoming work from this author. For now, I refer the reader to Andrew Morris’s Colonial Project, National Game and Yu Junwei’s Playing in Isolation, both referenced in these notes.

Youth Baseball and Colonial Identity in Taiwan, 1920-1968

Documents

Transcript of Youth Baseball and Colonial Identity in Taiwan, 1920-1968