Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Celebrity Commentary" (coming soon)
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.
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One year ago on Round and Square (13 June 2012)—Accidental Ethnographer: A Yankee on the Yangtze (a)Two years ago on Round and Square (13 June 2011)—Living and Learning: Being Like Water
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| [a] Individual and Society RF |
可飛ばせ, 土田!
Let 'er rip, Tsuchida! OR
Fly to base, Tsuchida!
Fly to base, Tsuchida!
—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Tsuchida is a common surname, like "Swenson")
(Tsuchida is a common surname, like "Swenson")
And even before the batter lets 'er rip (and flies to base), the buzz in the stands in palpable.
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| [b] Palpable RF |
The cheers of Japanese fans are so far beyond what most American baseball fans have come to expect that it defies the imagination at times.
We'll spend a few days looking at the dynamics of cheering, but one of the best places to begin is with a terrific article from the New York Times from 2009. Check it out, and we'll continue tomorrow with some of the dynamics of eager participation in the stands.
This is not your Honus Wagner's national pastime.
[If you don't read Japanese, but want to have some sense of the Japanese kana and kanji in these posts, just copy the phrases and paste them into translation software such as Babylon or Google Translate].
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