Until recently, there has been little study of sport in China and Taiwan undertaken by scholars in the West. Andrew Morris’ Colonial project, national game helps fill this void by tracing the chronological development of baseball in Taiwan. It is a welcome extension of his argument regarding sport as a global product in China, which he explored in an earlier book Marrow of the nation.Footnote 4Marrow demonstrated how globalism played a crucial role in the development of sport in early twentieth-century China via the Chinese borrowing and adaptation of tiyu (physical culture) associated with the West and Japan. Colonial project now provides an understanding of how these global influences – from Japan, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and America – shaped baseball in Taiwan for more than a century.
Morris argues that the significance of baseball has more to do with ‘global processes of colonialism, imperialism, the cold war, and capitalism than about limited notions of a Taiwanese nation’ (p. 2). Throughout the book, he uses the concept of ‘glocalization’ (‘global localization’), first coined by the Sony co-founder Akio Morita. An online dictionary (Morris has not found the term in printed ones) defines ‘glocalization’ as ‘the creation of products or services intended for the global market, but customized to suit the local culture’ (p. 9). His application is not economic, but instead an analysis of how ‘the complicated cultural position of baseball during Japan's colonial occupation of Taiwan well represents this tension between imperialist and globalizing forces and the “expectations” and demands of a Taiwanese population’ (p. 9). In particular, Taiwan's Han Taiwanese and Austronesian Aborigines found in baseball one of the few avenues where they could succeed under Japanese colonial rule.
Taiwan's claim to baseball as its ‘national game’ is profoundly influenced by Japanese and American cultural imperialism. Japan imported the sport around 1897, early during its period of colonial rule (1895–1945). According to Morris, the Japanese restricted the sport to their own players in its first two decades partly because they feared being bested by their colonial subjects. However, in 1919 they embarked on a new policy of dōka (assimilation) of the Han Taiwanese and Austronesian Aboriginal population. This project entailed an effort to transform Taiwan's ‘savage’ aborigines into civilized colonial subjects through modern forms of team sport.
Morris highlights a successful example of ethnic integration in Taiwanese baseball by focusing on a team from southern Taiwan's Tainan District Kagi Agriculture and Forestry Institute (Kanō). In 1931, Kanō fielded a ‘triethnic harmonious’ team featuring four Taiwan Aborigines, two Han Taiwanese, and three Japanese players in its starting nine (pp. 31–2). The team became the first with Taiwanese (Han or Aborigine) players on its roster to qualify for Japan's trans-regional Koshien National High School Baseball Tournament, an event that included teams from different regions of its empire.
Following Japan's defeat in 1945, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang or KMT) took control of Taiwan's government. With well-supported examples, Morris argues that the KMT regime ‘failed to appropriate effectively the game of baseball for its own purposes’ (p. 64) and never saw the promotion of the sport as useful to their governance. Part of the reason lay in the Nationalist Party's view of baseball as a despicable remnant of Japan's colonial rule. Nevertheless, the regime did seek to ‘transform, Sinicize, and decolonize the game’ (p. 76). For instance, the KMT tried to co-opt the story of how impoverished Bunun Aborigine boys from the tiny Maple Leaf (Hongye) Elementary School went on to become champions of the 1968 Little League World Series. The KMT celebrated how the boys overcame great obstacles, symbolizing the uniquely capitalist spirit and hard-earned economic success of Taiwan under its governance. Beginning in the 1970s, Taiwan's most important ally, the United States, gradually shunned the island in favour of cultivating cordial relations with the PRC. Meanwhile, Taiwanese teams travelled to America and won ten impressive Little League World Series titles between 1969 and 1981, bringing much-needed glory and attention to the nation on a global stage.
Also of note is the fact that Taiwanese professional baseball, much as the Japanese leagues or Major League baseball in America, has increasingly attracted foreign players. Ironically, this means that the age-old concern about how to celebrate nationalism when foreigners play the ‘national pastime’ is found worldwide, itself a global discussion. Beginning in the 1990s, foreign (usually American or Dominican) players became a visible presence in the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) – in fact, ‘by 1995, 44 percent of the CPBL's players came from outside Taiwan!’ (p. 136). This one-way globalization, with the notable exception of Chien-ming Wang (ace pitcher for the New York Yankees during the 2006–07 season), exacerbated Taiwanese frustrations about ‘the difficulty of creating a ‘local (bentu) baseball culture’ in a league dominated by foreign players’ (p. 138).
Perhaps one shortcoming of Colonial project is that it focuses solely on male baseball players. There is no reference, for example, to allowing girls access to Little League baseball, which was an ongoing debate within the organization after 1970. In general, Morris does not address whether the game was considered more (or less) acceptable for females in Taiwan than it was in Japan or the US. These historical questions are ever more important considering the recent attention that Asian female athletes are receiving worldwide. In 2010 a Japanese female pitcher, Eri Yoshida, made headlines when she signed to play for the minor league Chico Outlaws in the US. Moreover, East Asian women now dominate professional golf, in particular the American Ladies Professional Golf Association. In 2011 the victory of Yani Tseng, a Taiwanese golfer who won the Women's British Open (for the second year running), was featured on the front page of all four Chinese-language dailies on the home island. Tseng is a new source of pride for many Taiwanese. However, Morris does not mention golf in Taiwan at all, even though the game has skyrocketed in popularity on the island and throughout East Asia. Did the Japanese introduce golf to the Taiwanese? If so, what other forms of Japanese sporting imperialism persisted long after 1945?
Morris’ broadest global comparison of the ‘Japanese colonial regime's success in transforming a once-savage and backward populace’ (p. 3) is C. L. R. James’ pioneering study of standout black cricketers who won West Indians a respect not otherwise granted by the British public.Footnote 5 Moreover, cricket also became India's ‘national’ sport and is widely played throughout the former British empire – more global comparisons are certainly possible. In essence, Morris’ excellent history of baseball in Taiwan prompts interesting questions and opens the door to further research on sport, imperialism, and popular culture in East Asia. His engaging, well-written narrative is enriched by journals, popular literature, newspapers, memoirs, and interviews with former players – all of which speak to themes of glocalization, assimilation, decolonization, and transnationalism. This book is a major contribution not only to Taiwan history and sport history but also to global history.
