Why are NPB uniforms in English?
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Why are NPB uniforms in English?
Someone sent me a 2000 Japanese baseball magazine and I found it interesting that all the uniforms are in English (both team and player name), yet English is not used anywhere else. When did this custom begin? Why?
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Re: Why are NPB uniforms in English?
[ Author: Heian-794 | Posted: May 26, 2005 9:46 PM
| HT Fan
]
Mischa,
Actually, the very first baseball uniforms in Japan had Japanese emblems on the front and Japanese numbers written vertically on the back. (There's a picture in "You Gotta Have Wa" if you have that book.)
During the 1934 (?) tour of the US by the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Club, the team switched the uniforms to all-English so that the American fans could read them.
For a brief time during WWII, the team names were put back into kanji, with no numbers at all, but the English layout returned when baseball resumed after the war.
There's a great scene in the Ken Burns baseball series where the host flips through a rack of those Japanese uniforms in numerical order. I thought this was very clever, since even someone wholly unacquainted with Japanese or Chinese can probably recognize the kanji for 1, 2, and 3, and deduce that the next two jerseys are 4 and 5. A nice subliminal five-second introductory Japanese lesson!
Actually, the very first baseball uniforms in Japan had Japanese emblems on the front and Japanese numbers written vertically on the back. (There's a picture in "You Gotta Have Wa" if you have that book.)
During the 1934 (?) tour of the US by the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Club, the team switched the uniforms to all-English so that the American fans could read them.
For a brief time during WWII, the team names were put back into kanji, with no numbers at all, but the English layout returned when baseball resumed after the war.
There's a great scene in the Ken Burns baseball series where the host flips through a rack of those Japanese uniforms in numerical order. I thought this was very clever, since even someone wholly unacquainted with Japanese or Chinese can probably recognize the kanji for 1, 2, and 3, and deduce that the next two jerseys are 4 and 5. A nice subliminal five-second introductory Japanese lesson!
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