It would be too easy, and not entirely accurate, to say that it is as closed as some of the Japanese markets. Baseball in Japan is open to players and coaches from the United States, Taiwan and South Korea, but at the same time, the cartel nature of the game bottles up the competitive spirit. The Japanese approach to the sport incorporates moral guidance, business management and company-based role assignments, making professional baseball a simple job for wages. Baseball in Japan has lost its passion and imagination. YOICHI FUNABASHI, ASAHI SHIMBUN IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO WRITE THE HISTORY OF BASEBALL IN JAPAN WITH-out discussing the impact of the gaijin. It was an American professor from Maine named Horace Wilson who is generally regarded as being the one to have introduced the game—ahead of other Meiji Era American professors in Japan who exposed their students to the sport—when, in the early 1870s, he taught his students at Tokyo’s elite Kaisei Gakk bsubru’s basic rules and fundamentals.
