Digitized by Jessica Suchman and Catherine Nissley.
Many businessmen in the U.S. are highly interested in the subject of baseball and could talk at length on the pennant stretch and the World Series with their customers and colleagues. In Japan, however, the names of the teams and most of the players are different, and the aura surrounding the history of the game is of another color. For the foreign businessman who wants to gain insight into the happenings on and off the baseball diamond in Japan, Robert Whiting's book is a must. The author digs deeply into the American-Japanese abyss which make Japanese baseball a very different phenomenon from its American counterpart, and he brings his observations into focus by organizing his work around the culture shock encountered by the American playing professional ball in Japan. From the first chapter titled "Outdoor Kabuki" through those entitled "Ugly American" and "The Gaijin's Complaint," Whiting charts a course through the storm created by m the mixing of Japanese and American cultural perspectives.