Hanshin's Paper Tigers

Whe

n I returned late this summer to western Japan, where I've been living on and off for 16 years, I felt more than ever like a post-modern Rip Van Winkle. Certain things are constant in life, and never more so than in tradition-loving Japan. Hello Kitty will never speak. The girls on Japanese TV shows, not very different, will be asked only to look pretty and say, "Is that so?" The trains are always on time. And the Hanshin Tigers, beloved baseball team of Japan's brawling, boisterous second city of Osaka, are always very close to last place in the Central League.

As in most traditions, there are patterns at work here. At the beginning of the season, the Tigers win a game or two, and their famously demented fans predict total victory. Then, very soon, their outfielders start dropping flies, their infielders fling routine ground balls in the general direction of Mount Fuji and three Tigers runners simultaneously arrive, bewildered, at the same base. Their home-run hitter goes off to join the Detroit Tigers. Their arch-rivals, the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo, claim the pennant. And the Tigers fans, like Japan's perennially beleaguered politicians and CEOs, promise domination next year.

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Once, as if by mistake, and in order to sow the seeds for deeper frustration, the Tigers won the Japan Series (once, that is, in 68 years). But otherwise, as with the Cubs of America (Osaka is perennially called Japan's Chicago), their place in the national pageant, and the seasonal order, is as the lovable bumpkin and comic prop. This year, though, not according to plan, the Tigers soared into first place in April and then refused to leave. They trounced the Giants, again and again (and their rivals' woes are compounded by the fact that it's now their star, Hideki Matsui, who is hitting home-runs in America). They have a higher winning percentage than any team on either side of the Pacific. The sudden boom in Tiger bedspreads, vitamin drinks and bullhorns is expected to pump an extra $1 billion into the Japanese economy. Even a foreigners' magazine in the region, Kansai Time Out, which specializes in being unimpressed by Japanese fashions, has an article on the Tigers in its current issue, another article on its information technology page, and yet another on its language page (explaining the lexicon of Tigers-ology).

The beauty of baseball, as of any sport, is of course that it confounds all expectations and offers happy endings (sometimes daily) not available in life. It serves as an outlet for our pent-up feelings and an escape from a world in which the promises of governments and businessmen are as reliable as those of weathermen. In Japan, where economic depression has been so sustained that people have turned to the antic Tamil films of southern India for some imported lunacy and energy, baseball has long been a secular religion, with the attendant promise of catechisms and rituals that never change. The fact that most of the local gods have migrated to America (the main one to have failed there is, of course, a Tigers star) has only deepened the general crisis of faith.

But this summer, with Tigermania everywhere, the team hopes to teach life a thing or two. The Tigers are being buoyed by a Japanese pitcher who's returned from the New York Yankees. Their manager is one of those Japanese of Korean descent otherwise pushed away from the headlines. Their distinctive rocket-shaped balloons have been exported as far away as Texas. Local politicians disport themselves on TV eating traditional lunches with the dishes served in the shape of the Tigers' logo.

In time, no doubt, the Tigers' bubble will burst, as all their other streaks have ended. The Giants, owned by the same company that dominates the country's radio and television networks and owns its largest newspaper, will reassert their place atop the tribal hierarchy. The plangent sounds of "When the Wind Blows from Mount Rokko," the Tigers' fight-song, will recede from the department stores. Order will restore itself as it always does after Carnival and Saturnalia (especially in tradition-loving Japan). But by then something may have been achieved that could change the hearts of a country always ready to believe in self-fulfilling cycles. If losers can win and if tigers can fly—well, anything is possible, really.