OSHU CITY, Japan — In Oshu, the small rural town where Shohei Ohtani grew up, baseball is as much a part of the landscape as the farmers’ fields and low-rise hills surrounding it. The area has long been known for its beef and ironwork. Now it’s famous for Ohtani.
Local officials have organized watch parties at community centers in the area where people are given inflatable sticks saying “Shohei Ohtani — The Pride of Oshu City” to wave as they cheer for Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar, as his team takes on the New York Yankees in Ohtani’s first World Series.
As they watched Game 4, which aired at 9 a.m. Wednesday in Japan, Yasuo Sakamoto, 74, and his wife, Keiko, 70, wore the Dodgers jerseys and hats they got when they visited Los Angeles this summer to see Ohtani play.
“Even at my age, I’m really awed by him,” Yasuo Sakamoto said of Ohtani. “In Japan when there’s news about Ohtani, it’s bright news. If they win, it’s going to be even brighter.”
After having lost the first three games to the Dodgers, the Yankees fended off a potential sweep in Game 4, winning 11-4 at home. The teams will play Game 5 in the best-of-seven series at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday — and Japan will be watching.
Ohtani, 30, a two-time American League Most Valuable Player who is the favorite to be named National League MVP this year, is not the first strong baseball player to have come out of Japan’s Iwate prefecture, which is about 300 miles north of Tokyo. But people here see him as a “once-in-a-century” talent.
“They’re blessed with wonderful instructors,” said superfan Hironobu Kanno, surrounded by some of the estimated 3,000 pieces of Ohtani memorabilia he has collected as he has watched Ohtani rise through Japan’s amateur ranks and into Major League Baseball with a record $700 million, 10-year contract.
Kanno, who displays the items at the hair salon he owns, figures he has spent roughly $100,000 buying items through auctions and other collectors. The salon also has images and bobbleheads of Ohtani’s dog, Decoy, and a photo of him with his wife, Mamiko Tanaka, a former professional basketball player in Japan.
Does Kanno think the Dodgers will pull off a World Series win?
“Of course,” he said, laughing. “The Yankees’ Game 4 win was a gift to New York.”
The games have been must-see viewing for many in Japan, where baseball was wildly popular even before Ohtani’s rise. Game 2 on Saturday averaged 15.9 million viewers in Japan, or more than 12% of the country’s population, according to Major League Baseball, making it Japan’s most-watched MLB postseason game ever.
It was also the second-most-watched MLB game ever in Japan after the Dodgers’ season opener this year in Seoul, South Korea, which aired live in prime time and drew an average of 18.7 million viewers.
Not content to watch from the other side of the world, some Japanese supporters have traveled to the U.S. to watch the series in person. Fans from Japan bought more World Series tickets for the first two games than from any other country outside North America, according to ticket broker StubHub.
Jeffrey J. Hall, a Tokyo-based researcher at Kanda University of International Studies, said Ohtani is more famous in Japan than Taylor Swift is in the U.S.
“Ohtani is a national hero in Japan, popular with every demographic. He’s more popular than any politician, businessperson or entertainer,” Hall said in an email.
“There’s never been a Japanese athlete with such stature,” Hall said. “He’s a symbol of Japan’s success on the international stage.”
Hall said people in Japan basically treat the Dodgers, who also include Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, as an extension of Team Japan.
“A victory for the Dodgers will be seen as a victory for Japanese baseball and the Japanese nation,” he said.
Ohtani has a long history playing baseball in Iwate, first in Little League and then for Hanamaki Higashi High School. The centerpiece of the Ohtani posters and displays at the town hall is an iron cast of his right hand, which juts out from a cabinet so people can shake or hold it.
In 2013, Ohtani began playing for Nippon Professional Baseball, the top league in Japan, leading the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters to victory in 2016 in the league’s annual championship, the Japan Series.
In 2018, Ohtani made his MLB debut with the Los Angeles Angels, further cementing himself as a standout player who excels in both pitching and hitting. Internationally he continues to play for Japan, being named MVP last year after he and his home country beat the U.S. in the World Baseball Classic.
Fans have followed his ups and downs every step of the way. They cheered last month when he became the first player in MLB history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season and worried about him Saturday when a shoulder injury in Game 2 briefly raised concerns about whether he could continue playing in the series.
Sachie Takahashi, 54, who was at the watch party Wednesday in a Dodgers shirt, said it had been Ohtani’s childhood dream to be part of a team that won the World Series.
“That his dream is becoming a reality,” she said, “it makes me think maybe our cheers have reached him.”
Janis Mackey Frayer and Arata Yamamoto reported from Oshu City and Peter Guo from Hong Kong.
CORRECTION (Oct. 30, 2024, 6 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the prefecture Ohtani hails from. It is Iwate, not Iwake.
