Aonishiki Arata, a 21-year-old rikishi from Vinnitsya, Ukraine (sister city of Kielce, Poland), won the Emperor’s Cup at the just-completed Kyushu Basho in Fukuoka, Japan. The talented, fast-rising youth in former rikishi Aminishiki‘s new Ajigawa Stable is now being considered for Ozeki (Champion) rank in Sumo’s Top Makuuchi Division. Congratulations to him. おめでとう！
Category Archives: Japan
Pilgrimage to Gdansk, 2025
Last weekend, we took advantage of Poland’s November 11 (= 11 Listopad ‘leaf-fall’ month) Independence Day holidays to make a pilgrimage to Gdansk, where my father and (doctrinally pacifist) Quaker/Mennonite/Church of the Brethren volunteers aboard the S.S. Carroll Victory Liberty ship arrived in 1946 to help deliver horses and chickens to devastated Poland.
My principal mentor in linguistics, Byron W. Bender, who was raised a Mennonite in Pennsylvania and later attended Quaker meetings in Honolulu, also arrived in Gdansk in 1946 on a similar mission aboard another Liberty ship, the S.S. Stephen R. Mallory.
These UNRRA efforts, including the delivery of goats to postwar Okinawa by my dad’s Quaker crony, Herbert Nicholson, a prewar missionary to Japan known as “Yagi-no-ojisan” (Uncle Goat) in postwar Japan. During the war years, he helped AJA internees in the U.S. After the UNRRA program ended, its participants founded the Heifer Project, now Heifer International.
The granddaughter of one of these Church of the Brethren volunteers, Peggy Reif Miller, has gathered many stories from other participants and built a very informative website titled Seagoing Cowboys.
I long ago started my Poland album on Flickr with scans of photos from my dad’s trip. Someone gave him a camera to record some of it. We managed to visit and photograph several sites he took photos of. Here are links to a few of his photos and our photos of the same sites, all much improved in 2025.
Oliwa Cathedral in 2025 vs. 1946. We managed to arrive there just in time for the noontime pipe organ concert on what was once the largest pipe organ in Europe. The cathedral was jam-packed.
Gdansk Old Town Hall in 2025 vs. 1946.
Hala Targowa (Market Hall) (under renovation) in 2025 vs. 1946. A string of kebab shops now obscures the old building from across the street.
We took a sleeper train (first class in our own 2-person compartment). It ran from near-midnite to near-dawn in each direction and required long waits in stations with no amenities except floors and benches and restrooms after 9 p.m. Nor was there any lulling clickety-clack, but lots of lurches as we lay down to sleep. That’s another story.
Goodwill Tours of Japan, 1927
From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 904-910:
In January, the FAC [Fresno Athletic Club] announced its arrangements to make a second tour of Asia in March with 40 games in Japan scheduled and plans to take the team to China and Korea with a stop in Honolulu on the way home. There were a number of new players on the team. Not included in the initial news wire was the fact that the FAC were visiting Japan at the invitation of Meiji University, or more specifically, Zenimura’s cousin, friend and colleague, Takizo Matsumoto, the man formerly known as Frank Narushima, one of the cofounders founders of the FAC. In February, the Japanese American newspaper Rafu Shimpo announced similar news about Lon Goodwin and his Philadelphia Royal Giants.
According to historian Kazuo Sayama, the Philadelphia Royal Giants traveled to Japan on its own budget and “on recommendation by a certain Japanese American entrepreneur in California.” Although he is never mentioned by name, historians believe that the entrepreneurial Californian is Zenimura based on his previous interactions with Goodwin and their teams throughout the 1925-26 seasons.
Much more about the goodwill tours online here.
California Japanese Baseball League, 1926
From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 846-853:
On March 5, the Associated Press announced that “a Japanese baseball league for California, the first of its kind to permanently organize, has been formed for a schedule of Sunday day afternoon games. Fresno, Stockton, Alameda and Sacramento are represented on the circuit. The players are all Japanese, and the games will be played in private parks owned by the Japanese baseball associations in the respective cities on the circuit. The Stockton team has incurred considerable expense in importing a number of players from the Hawaiian islands, while Fresno has gathered in star athletes from various parts of the United States. The schedule starts next Sunday and closes November 3, with an intermission during the summer months.”
In the first game of the season for the California Japanese Baseball League (CJBL), the Fresno Athletic Club blanked the Yamato Club of Stockton, 4 to 0, at the Japanese Ballpark in Fresno. Nitta held the Stockton lineup to two hits, while Nushida and Munishi were touched for 11 hits by the Fresno crew. The big sticks for the Japanese were carried by Nakagawa, who drove in two runs – base runners Zenimura and Sukita – with a long single in the fifth. Yoshikawa, Kunitomo, and Iwata all got wood on the ball to drive in the other two runs.
Japan vs. U.S. Baseball, 1924
From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 695-708:
Captain Zenimura and his boys lost two of the three games against the Salt Lake Bees in the spring of 1924, but ultimately they – and to some degree, Japanese American baseball itself – won the respect of their Caucasian peers in the Pacific Coast League. After the series with Salt Lake, the FAC looked forward to some heated contests against Japanese American ball clubs. In April they welcomed the Stockton Yamato to the Firemen and Policemen’s ballpark and defeated them, 5 to 4. The Fresno Bee also announced that Zenimura’s club “will play a two game series with the Meiji University team here on May 10th and 11th, after which they will plan an invasion of the Orient.”
The Meiji University team – the college champions of Japan – planned to tour the East and Midwest, in addition to its games against West Coast clubs including Zenimura’s, and then return home on June 29. As it turned out, the San Jose Asahi would be the only Japanese American team to defeat the 1924 Meiji ballclub on its tour in the U.S.” Ironically, while the Meiji University ballclub was in the United States touring, President Calvin Coolidge signed into law the Immigration Act of 1924 which effectively ended all Japanese immigration to the U.S. During the months of June and July, Zenimura was busy making plans for the upcoming tour to Japan. Once all the details were addressed and players secured, Zeni distributed the following information on the Associated Press night wire:
FRESNO, July 17. – The Fresno Athletic Club will sail from San Francisco September 2 on board the President Pierce for a tour of the Hawaiian Islands and Japan, it was announced today. The regular team will be reinforced by Pitcher Miyahara of Centre College, Kentucky; Outfielder Tsuda of Whitman College, Washington, Pitcher Nushida of Stockton and a couple of Fresno players yet to be selected. The Fresno Athletic Club claims the Japanese baseball championship of America.
In preparation for the tour, Zenimura had the club increase workouts from three to four times a week. In addition, he scheduled a best-of-three-game series against the tough Fresno Tigers, an independent team led by new manager Art Ramage. The Tigers’ new skipper competed at Santa Clara College and enjoyed brief stints in professional baseball with the New York Americans (1916) and Sacramento Senators (1918).
California Baseball in 1921
From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 487-499:
According to historian William F. McNeil, the California Winter League (CWL) experienced an increase in talent during the 1920-21 season. McNeil called it a “breakthrough” year with competition playing at the AA and AAA level. The CWL rise in talent was attributed to the participation of Negro Leagues caliber players with the L.A. White Sox, Lincoln Giants and Alexander Giants. They played all of their games at the newly constructed Anderson Park (aka White Sox Park), named after local black businessman Doc Anderson, and their rosters boasted future Hall of Famers Andy Cooper and Biz Mackey, and a host of local black athletes, including University of Southern California star running back Johnny Riddle. Zenimura and his FAC team would get their chance four years later to test their mettle against these great ballplayers.
In February 1921 in New York, a group of Japanese representatives from Waseda, Tokyo, Yokohama and Kobe universities announced that they were eager to take “an all-star baseball team made up of members of the Race,” also known as Negro League players, to Japan. Spokesmen for the delegation told reporters that they were eager to see a first-class team of Negro Leaguers play Waseda University, with the goal of helping to foster interest in the pastime in Japan.
Waseda University would have to wait another six years to play a first-class team of Negro League players in Japan. Yet, they only needed to wait three weeks to compete against a first-class team of Japanese American players in Hawaii. On May 9, 1921, the college boys from Waseda battled the Hawaiian Asahi, featuring many of Zeni’s former Island teammates and future FAC [= Fresno Athletic Club] teammates. The visiting ballclub was walloped by the Asahis to the tune of 8 to 2.
But U.S.-Japanese baseball relations flourished in the later part of 1921. The Los Angeles Times reported that nine clubs from the Pacific Coast and Hawaii had either made the trip or were making plans to tour Japan. The list of teams invading Japan included a PCL [= Pacific Coast League] all-star star team led by Seattle baseball man Frank Miya; semipro players from Canada and Hawaii; the Seattle Asahi, the top Nisei team of the West Coast; college teams, including the University of California and University of Washington; and the Sherman Indian School of Southern California.
Early Baseball in Hawaii
From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 266-283, 338-343:
When young Zeni arrived in Honolulu in 1907, … baseball was already the most popular sport in the islands. For that matter, the game was played in Hawaii long before it was introduced to Japan or to most of the continental U.S. In 1849, Alexander Cartwright – the man recognized as the father of the modern game – moved to Honolulu after a failed attempt at life in California. Upon arrival he quickly became one of the Hawaii’s leading citizens by founding the first fire department, library, and baseball field. In 1852, he organized several teams and began to teach the game across the islands. In the mid-1880s, Japanese plantation laborers played baseball to escape the tedious work of the sugarcane fields. As the rivalries between the plantation camp and company teams grew, so did the competition….
The first Japanese American baseball team – the Excelsior – was founded in Hawaii in 1899 by the Rev. Takie Okumura. “I formed a baseball team, made up mostly of boys in my home,” Okumura said. “Being the only team among the Japanese, its competitors were Hawaiian, Portuguese and Chinese.” The Excelsiors were a successful baseball club and considered one of the pioneering Japanese baseball teams in Hawaii.’
Another early all-Japanese team in Hawaii was the Asahi (“Rising Sun”) club, organized by Gikaku “Steere” Noda. The Asahi started off as a group of teenagers honing their skills on the sandlots of Iwilei in 1905. Within a few years they were playing in multi-ethnic leagues competing against the All-Chinese, the Braves (all Portuguese) and the Wanderers (all Caucasians). The diversity of the leagues inspired Noda to say “that through the world of sports, we can promote goodwill and fellowship.” Zeni joined the Hawaiian Asahi ballclub club in 1915, and it appears that he gleaned Noda’s wisdom and applied it throughout his career on goodwill tours.
…
In January 1915, Honolulu witnessed the development of a formal league comprised of four and sometimes six teams, including a native team, a Japanese team, an American team, and an army team. Over time the league developed senior and junior leagues based on skill level. After touring Japan in 1915, the Hawaiian Asahi competed in the junior league in 1916. That same year, Zenimura joined the Asahi.
Between 1916 and 1919, Kenichi dedicated his playing time to two baseball teams, the semipro Hawaiian Asahi and the Mills High School ball club. Mills, which later changed its name to the Mid-Pacific Institute, was a perennial baseball powerhouse in the late 1910s. In his 1943 Gila River Courier interview, Zeni proudly shared that his Mills High school nine “played the Hilo All-Stars for Hawaii’s Inter-Island Championship after defeating prep and semi-pro clubs.”
Mariners Manager Don Wakamatsu
From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 37-53:
When Hall of Famer Frank Robinson was named the Cleveland Indians manager in 1975, he said that he wished Jackie Robinson was there with him to appreciate the significance of the moment. Jackie had died just three years before Frank became the first African American manager in MLB history.
In January 2009, I earned the distinction of becoming the first Asian American manager in MLB history when I was asked to lead the Seattle Mariners. [Ichiro joined the Mariners in 2001.] Unlike Frank Robinson, there was not one person who I wished could be with me to appreciate the moment – there were thousands.
I often talk about “those who came before me.” These people include my family, the thousands who were sent into internment camps during World War II, the men who served bravely in the 442nd, and the pioneers of the early Japanese American baseball leagues.
With the exception of my family, none of the others were with me physically when I joined the Mariners. They were with me in spirit though.
I am a fourth generation Japanese American, also known as a Yonsei. I was born in Hood River, Oregon, in 1963, and as a child I had no idea of what my family had endured during World War II. In actuality, they kept a lot of that from me. It wasn’t until college that I started to learn more about the past and that dark chapter of American history.
The implications of my heritage first struck me when a government check arrived in the mail in the late 1980s. It was my father’s share of reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. My dad was born in the Tule Lake camp in California, just south of the Oregon border. I didn’t quite understand what the check was for. All I remember was my dad’s reaction: “it was all too little, too late.”‘
Over the years, my curiosity about my heritage has grown. From a friendship with baseball historian Kerry Yo Nakagawa I learned in great detail about Japanese Americans and baseball in the internment camps. I imagined the game I loved played behind coils of barbed wire and realized just how little I knew about my past.
Since then, I have discovered that the internment camp chapter is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Japanese American baseball history. There is so much more underneath. For example, few people know that
• in 1897 the first person of Japanese ancestry attempted to play in the majors;
• the first Japanese American baseball team was organized in 1903;
• a major league “color-line” drawn against Japanese players was publicly acknowledged in 1905;
• the first Japanese American baseball league was founded in 1910; and
• between 1922 and 1931, Nisei and Negro League teams did more to export the American game to Japan than their major league counterparts.All proof that there is still so much of the fascinating Japanese American baseball history that has yet to be told.
Jägers vs. Russians, August 1916
From The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer, by Alexander Pfeifer and Philipp Cross (True Perspective Press, 2024), Kindle pp. 162-163:
10.8.1916 Early at sunrise, we had a view from the ridge on all sides that I have rarely seen so beautiful — one mountain range behind the other, and one summit next to the other.
Just as we arrived at Height 1478, there was fierce rifle and machine-gun fire ahead of us. The Russians attacked our positions but were repelled. We camped on the opposite slope of 1478, but the Russians must have noticed us because they graced us with several shells and shrapnel. Oberjäger Schmelz received a shrapnel shot in the upper leg as a result. We are lying in the warm sunshine all morning and at noon.
We are supposed to take back two heights; the eastern foothills of Point 1385 that the Austrians have recently lost — Captain Conrad leads the storm battalion made from Austrians and our 1st and 3rd Companies. I lead the 3rd Company, and Seemann leads the 1st. While taking advantage of the very difficult and partly densely overgrown terrain, I move into a deep gorge with my company in the afternoon where we line ourselves up for the assault as our very meagre artillery fires. It is a miracle that the Russians didn’t see us, as we would have fared very badly otherwise. We were thus only shot at slightly when we were already in the gorge. I likewise give the order to attack as soon as we see that the 1st Company is advancing to the right of us. Lingelbach starts with the first wave of the assault, and then Kramer. Both of them swarm out. I still stay back with the reserve platoon for the time being.
The ascent is incredibly high, steep, and troublesome with dense undergrowth and brittle trees everywhere. There is soon raging gunfire. Our artillery now shoots very well, and seven of our machine guns uninterruptedly pound the opposing foxholes. The Russians respond, and it is such an infernal racket that you can barely understand the person next to you. 15 minutes after our firing lines have advanced, I can’t stand it anymore down below and order my reserve platoon to follow me. There is suddenly loud screaming halfway up. Jägers shout “Over Here!”, and Russian voices yell in confusion. To the left of me, I unclearly see a large number of Russians through the bushes with jägers among them. I think that this is a flanking attack and even get the pistol ready to fire. I then see that the Russians have no weapons — they were the first captives.
I now continue ahead in all hastiness and arrive fully exhausted with my reserves at the 1200-metre-high ridge, which has been in our possession for 15 minutes. The 1st Company have also captured their height, and so have the Austrians to the left of us. My company has taken almost 320 prisoners. Some of the Russians defended themselves from our attack, but they surrendered without resistance for the most part. A large number had fled. Within the company, I have one dead, two heavily wounded and four lightly; incredibly minor casualties in relation to the Russian superiority and their brilliant position. Such a splendid success would have been impossible if there were only 50 Englishmen up here. The height was taken at 7 o’clock in the evening. There was then a lot of work — transporting the wounded and the prisoners, expanding the position to the other side, reorganising the company, pitching tents, setting up guards, providing food and so forth.
Our men are shooting a pig. There are also potatoes and kohlrabi (German turnips) up here.
I slept the night in the tent because the Ruthenian wooden huts stink too much and are likely full of vermin.
The Russians were armed with Japanese rifles.
Polish Language Exhibit in Osaka
Culture.Pl announces EXPO 2025 in Osaka: Interactive Exhibition about the Polish Language… the World’s First Using AI, running October 3-23.
Following the international success of ‘Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi: Poland in 100 Words’ – an unconventional book about the Polish language – a remarkable exhibition based on its pages will soon arrive back in Japan. The seventh edition of the exhibition will open on 3 October 2025 at Knowledge Capital in central Osaka, this time utilising the potential of artificial intelligence for the first time.
Thanks to a collaboration between the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Knowledge Capital Association, and Atsuhiko Yasuda (XOOMS co. ltd.), the exhibition will be enhanced with an AI module that enables visitors to engage in dialogue with artificial intelligence inspired by the book’s content. This innovation, made possible by close Polish-Japanese collaboration, allows visitors to experience ‘The Amazing Land of Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi’ – previously shown at EXPO 2020 in Dubai, London, and Basel – in an entirely new way. The project is part of Po!landポ！ランド, a series of events organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It is part of the cultural programme accompanying Poland’s participation in the World Expo 2025, coordinated by the Polish Investment and Trade Agency.
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Since its 2018 premiere, the bestselling ‘Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi: Poland in 100 Words’ has won praise from readers and media outlets around the world. Designed for an international audience, the book presents 100 words that best capture Polish culture, history and everyday life in an original, accessible and humorous way.The texts, written by Mikołaj Gliński, Matthew Davies and Adam Żuławski, are full of witty observations, linguistic curiosities and cultural references, while its distinctive visual style was created by painter and illustrator Magda Burdzyńska.
The exhibition ‘The Amazing Land of Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi’ continues the success of the book, creating a fascinating, multidimensional story about the Polish language. The exposition combines illustrations inspired by the publication with various artistic forms – from embroidery, textiles and sculptures, to neon lights and video animations – all accompanied by an original sound installation.
Filed under art, Japan, language, literature, Poland
Far Outliers 