Shohei Ohtani has been a superstar in Japan for more than a decade, but one day earlier this year, a Tokyo resident named Tatsuo Shinke noticed something different.
Shinke, the CEO of Mint, a leading trading card store, had already watched as Ohtani’s soaring popularity had fueled the Japanese collectibles industry, spiked Japanese television ratings for Major League Baseball, and pushed baseball news into every corner and crevice of the country’s vast media ecosystem.
Yet as Ohtani made history in his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, becoming the first player in history to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in one season, Shinke observed another data point: His mother, Emiko.
At 73 years old, Emiko had never followed baseball. But because Ohtani’s Dodgers games are aired live in the morning in Japan, and because he has become a daily fixture on the country’s popular morning variety shows — the equivalent of “Good Morning America” or “Today” — Emiko developed a new morning routine: She wakes up, eats breakfast, and then turns on Ohtani.
“Elderly people in Japan love Ohtani,” Shinke said. “It’s my mother. And all my mother’s friends. She’s retired already, so she has enough time to watch all the games in the morning.”
In the United States, the World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers is a matchup featuring the country’s two biggest cities and most high-profile franchises. The audience could surpass 20 million viewers per game for the first time since 2016.
In Japan, it will likely be even bigger.
In seven seasons in the majors, including six for the Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani has lorded his talent over Major League Baseball in a manner previously thought impossible. For his trouble, he has captured two Most Valuable Player awards while dominating as a hitter and a pitcher. If he wins his third this November, as is expected, he will become the first full-time designated hitter to win the award, a role he was forced to play after injuring his elbow last season.
At World Series Media Day on Thursday, no one was a bigger draw than Ohtani. (Katharine Lotze / Getty Images)
In America, his performance earned him a $700 million contract — the largest in history — and stardom in a sport that increasingly trails its rivals in cultural capital. But back home in Japan, where baseball is the most popular sport, Ohtani’s celebrity has reached stratospheric levels, akin to Michael Jordan or David Beckham, figures who transcended their field of play and whose fame turned them into international avatars for their home country.
“There isn’t a person in Japan who doesn’t know who Ohtani is, I don’t think,” said Robert Whiting, an American author in Tokyo who has written about Japanese baseball since the 1970s.
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