TOKYO – Two springs ago, Andrew Friedman and his Los Angeles Dodgers lieutenants traveled across the Pacific Ocean hoping to put eyes on a phenomenon who could shape the next era of the sport. They went to the Japanese town of Miyazaki, which was the center of the country’s baseball universe in hosting Samurai Japan’s national team for the World Baseball Classic. It did not take long for Friedman to finalize conclusions that would alter the direction of his franchise and shape of the sport.
First, Friedman immediately recognized that Japan would run away with the tournament, even as the United States assembled a roster that included the best players in Major League Baseball from Mookie Betts to Mike Trout and beyond. Observing the workouts, Friedman and his fellow executives were amazed by the sheer depth and quality of talent as they watched a collection of Japanese pitchers throw their bullpen sessions. Their stuff was elite. Their lineup was deep. Their style of play was crisp.
Second, Friedman noted a country whose passion for the sport presented a ripe market for the Dodgers to tap into. It’s turned into more than just a business proposition, though it’s clear business is going quite well. Major League Baseball has sought to connect with the market for decades at this point, first coming to the country for regular season games in 2000 and returning this week for a sixth visit for the Dodgers and Chicago Cubs opening the 2025 campaign.
“With the passion that the Japanese culture has for baseball, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing this uptick,” Friedman said. “When you couple talent with passion, good things tend to happen.”
Japanese sensation Roki Sasaki will make his MLB debut in the second game of the Dodgers’ series against the Cubs. (Masterpress / Getty Images)
It’s been 30 years since Hideo Nomo came stateside with the Dodgers, and 24 years since Ichiro Suzuki debuted with the Seattle Mariners and broke conventional stateside wisdom about Japanese hitters by winning the MVP award as a rookie.
What they’ve spawned is a Golden Era of Japanese baseball. Shohei Ohtani is the undisputed best player in the world. Ichiro will become the first Japanese-born player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. And starting Tuesday at the Tokyo Dome, a two-game series between the Dodgers and Cubs will provide the perfect showcase for Japan’s undeniable influence on the game.
Ohtani is marking his homecoming, playing his first major-league games back in his home country. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga are the first pair of Japanese-born pitchers to square off on Opening Day. And Roki Sasaki, the next generational phenom, is set to make his major-league debut in front of a global audience.
Japanese baseball talent seemingly has never been better nor more influential. That Samurai Japan team’s biggest star, Ohtani, is the most popular player in the world, dubbed a “unicorn” by his manager and the “most talented player to ever play this game” by Friedman.
In December 2023, the winter after visiting Miyazaki, Friedman signed Ohtani to what at the time was a record-setting 10-year, $700 million contract. The organization’s interest in Ohtani had dated a decade, to when Ohtani was an emerging young talent out of the Iwate prefecture — by the time the Dodgers signed him, Ohtani already had won two MVPs during his time with the Angels.
That same month, Friedman signed Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the richest contract ever given to a pitcher at 12 years and $325 million. This past winter he landed 23-year-old phenom Roki Sasaki, who left early from Japan’s top league, Nippon Professional Baseball, in hopes of becoming the latest Japanese star in a sport popping with them.
That Samurai Japan from the WBC team included seven Japanese-born players currently playing in Major League Baseball, with Seiya Suzuki, Kodai Senga, Tomoyuki Sugano, Yusei Kikuchi and Kenta Maeda also playing stateside. Combined, those 12 players have signed deals that will net them nearly $1.7 billion in total guarantees with big-league clubs, reinforcing a level of development that has transformed some of the sport in recent years. There have never been more Japanese players in the majors. And major-league clubs, especially the reigning World Series champions, have taken notice.
“This is the golden age,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was born in Okinawa and is the first Asian-born manager to win a World Series. “I think it’s going to spur (many) more people to want Japanese players to come over here. Because I think it’s the confidence of Major League Baseball teams with the players that come from Japan, it’s at an all-time high as far as the trust and what you can expect.”
There are no hard and fast rules for defining a golden age. But as Ohtani himself acknowledges, plenty of work was needed to reach what is undeniably a high point in the history of Japanese baseball.
“It’s hard to tell if this is the golden age for Japanese players in the United States because I know there’s been a lot of Japanese players that came before me,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton before the series. “But having five (in one game) is a big deal. It’s truly a big deal.”
According to the lore, baseball, or yakyu, was introduced in the country by professor Horace Wilson in 1872. The Civil War veteran had been recruited by the Meiji rule to help westernize Japan and taught baseball as a means of physical activity. By 1905 Japan sent its first organized baseball team to the United States. By 1915, the famed high school baseball tournament, Koshien, was launched. A baseball frenzy emerged.
Japanese professional baseball sprouted not long after Major League Baseball took off. Barnstorming tours between the two leagues became the stuff of fame, with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and others coming for different tours to help grow the game across the Pacific.
A 1934 tour marked the biggest collection of American baseball stars to make their way to the country. Barnstorming tours by Negro League All-Star teams in the 1920s and ’30s also helped popularize baseball in Japan. Pioneering Black stars Larry Doby and Don Newcombe later became trailblazers in Japan, too, as they were among the first former major leaguers to make their way to Nippon Professional Baseball, joining the Chunichi Dragons in 1962.
Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese-born player in the majors two years later, having originally been signed from the Nankai Hawks to a development contract with the San Francisco Giants before being called up in September of 1964 for his major-league debut.
Japanese pitcher Masanori Murakami pitched 54 games for the Giants in the mid-’60s, and then it was a long wait until Hideo Nomo. (Associated Press file photo)
Murakami’s two years, spanning 54 appearances, lasted as the lone trailblazing effort for Japanese baseball in Major League Baseball for decades until Nomo declared himself retired from the Kintestu Buffaloes in hopes of being signed in the United States. When he signed with the Dodgers in 1995, “Nomo, he had a whole country watching him,” then-Dodgers first baseman Eric Karros recalled to The Athletic in a 2024 interview. Nomo won Rookie of the Year honors, opening a door that plenty of talent has walked through ever since.
Ichiro’s success as a hitter further expanded Major League Baseball’s ideas about the Japanese-born talent pool, winning MVP and Rookie of the Year honors in 2001 and collecting 3,089 hits across 19 seasons. The waves of talent since, from Kazuhiro Sasaki to Kazuhisa Ishii to Hideki Matsui, Tahadito Iguchi and Hiroki Kuroda and others have only been jump-started over the last decade-plus.
“I think players domestically have gotten way better in the last 20 years,” said Friedman, whose his time in baseball goes back to 2004 as an executive in the Tampa Bay Rays’ front office. “And I think it’s no different in Japan. I think it is more the volume. There are just so many talented pitchers right now. I knew there was a lot of talent. I just didn’t appreciate the volume of it.”
That, Friedman said, includes the preponderance of pitchers throwing at higher velocities. Japanese players, Roberts said, have grown more “physical.” Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell pointed to the proliferation of high-tech pitch-tracking data and its impact on allowing pitchers to develop their arsenals and hitters being forced to improve to keep up in NPB.
That has also allowed new stars to emerge.
“There’s been a lot more in-person scouting, but also the growth of in-stadium TrackMan and Hawk-Eye data that’s being sold to major-league teams,” said Joel Wolfe, an agent whose list of clients includes Yamamoto, Sasaki and Seiya Suzuki, among others. “So teams are far more aware of the quality of the players than they were before, without having to actually send people over there because they’re able to scout Japanese players the way they scout amateur players here.”
That has made high-powered agents such as Wolfe, and others, more willing to make trips to Japan to find clients. With more interest from big-league teams, high-powered agencies have followed suit.
“He’s like a local over there,” Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow joked of Wolfe — who also represents him — before the club departed for Tokyo.
Of course, the increase in talent level has made Nippon Professional Baseball an even more appealing landing spot for players coming from the United States. Long gone are the days of the stereotype of “Mr. Baseball,” the 1992 film featuring Tom Selleck that paints Japanese baseball as a landing spot for players on their last legs. Players like Randy Bass, Tuffy Rhodes, Wladimir Balentien and Willy Mo Peña became household names in Japan, and the league became a place where Latin American players thrived.
“The players who came before me — a lot of Venezuelan players have played in this league and they’ve talked really highly about the Japanese fan base,” said Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas, who is Venezuelan.
The list of names who have come to NPB and found success, then returned to the big leagues to succeed has only grown in recent years. One of those cases will be participating in this week’s series: Ryan Brasier is back in Japan now with the Cubs after rejuvenating his career in 2017 with the Hiroshima Carp.
Players pose after the exhibition baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Hanshin Tigers. (Yuichi Yamazaki / AFP via Getty Images)
Friedman made his vision for Dodgers dominance in Japan public on the day he introduced Ohtani as a Dodger. The franchise’s pursuit of Ohtani had predated his tenure, but finally landing him with the richest contract in baseball history marked a turning point.
Friedman said that the Dodgers sought to “paint Japan Dodger blue.”
The organization’s roots in the country had been ingrained since Nomo. The years since had seen the Dodgers continue to add from the region, from Ishii to Takashi Saito to Kuroda to Kenta Maeda and more coming to the Dodgers directly from Japan. But with Ohtani, the biggest star in the sport, they saw a plan with practical and business dividends.
Two weeks after signing Ohtani, they bolstered that aim by signing Yamamoto. When Sasaki opted to become a free agent this winter, he signed with the Dodgers — and the pitcher said that while it was not a priority to have another Japanese-born player on the roster, “I did want to check to make sure that a Japanese player would be embraced in the team and the city.”
The Dodgers have done more than just try to welcome the market. They’ve tried to corner it, seemingly announcing new marketing agreements with Japanese-based companies just about every other week. The Dodgers have outpaced the majors with three Japanese-born players on their active roster. Only the Cubs have more than one among the other 29 clubs.
“For us, winning is the primary driver,” Friedman said. “But a very strong secondary benefit is the idea that kids growing up in Japan will be watching Dodger games, become Dodgers fans, will go on to play in the NPB and when they’re making a decision about coming over to Major League Baseball, that it is at least directionally helpful for us to have that recognition and fandom in place as they’re going through that to help us even ever so slightly.”
Each media session with Ohtani, Yamamoto, Sasaki — and even Roberts — has become a marketing pitch, including a backdrop with Japanese sponsors splattered behind it.
“I think it’s very thought-out,” Roberts said. “Everything I say in regards to Japanese players, Japan, the crossover with Dodger fans and Dodger baseball, gets to really essentially making every team jealous or hating the Dodgers.
“We want complete market share of that country. We want every young player over there to be a Dodger fan. So when they have an opportunity to come over, it’s a no-brainer.”
Japanese home run champ Sadaharu Oh, shown here in 2003 after managing the Daiei Hawks to a Pacific League pennant. (Jiji Press / AFP via Getty Images)
Fresh off winning the World Series this past fall, Roberts received an invitation. The Dodgers’ manager had marketing opportunities that called for a trip to Japan in December, and the nation’s greatest historic baseball hero, Saduharu Oh, wanted to meet for dinner.
No player in professional baseball history has slugged more home runs than the 868 that Oh hit over 22 seasons with the Yomiuri Giants, the Japanese equivalent of the New York Yankees.
“He was almost like a figment of my imagination and like a folk hero,” Roberts said. “A fictional character.”
For three hours, Roberts and his son, Cole, dined with the 84-year-old Oh and chatted through an interpreter. Oh spoke in awe of Ohtani, the two-way superstar who became the first player in major-league history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in his first season with the Dodgers. Oh has become a frequent watcher of the Dodgers, Roberts said, eager to see what this golden generation of Japanese baseball can achieve.
He also can’t wait for what’s next.
“He just is excited that more Japanese players are coming over,” Roberts said.
The talent is undeniable. And there is more coming.
“I feel like it’s really all thanks to the Japanese players that came before us, who created the stepping stone for us to be here now,” the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga said. “I think I want to be kind of the stepping stone for future generations of Japanese players to come play in MLB. I’m going to work hard and try my best so hopefully more Japanese players can come play in MLB.”
“I think a lot of people in the U.S. are taking notice of baseball in Japan,” the Cubs’ Seiya Suzuki said. “So I’m looking forward to a lot of Japanese players in the future coming to the U.S. and taking that challenge on.”
That generation could be growing soon. Munetaka Murakami of the Yakult Swallows is among the next Japanese-born stars who have landed on major-league radars. The pull of American baseball has led the likes of Rintaro Sasaki to go to Stanford University and Shotaro Morii to sign with the Athletics, both skipping NPB entirely.
Nobby Ito, the official historian of NPB, has set his sights even higher.
“I think the next 50, 100 years — much better,” Ito said. “I believe better players than Ohtani will appear. … So the question, is this current Japanese baseball the golden age or not? Yes, of course. But it’s getting better and better and better.”
— The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Patrick Mooney contributed to this report
(Top photo of Shohei Ohtani: Masterpress / Getty Images)
