Asian Heritage Portal

Asahi Baseball Team National Historic Event

A Legend in Baseball: A Legacy from the Japanese Canadian Baseball Team to its Heirs.
©Pat Adachi, 1992

Location: Vancouver, British Columbia

Date designated: 2008

The designation:
Baseball was arguably the most popular sport in Canada during the first half of the 20th century.  It was enjoyed as a participatory and spectator sport by all social classes and many ethnocultural communities. Nikkei (persons of Japanese descent living outside Japan) all along the West Coast joined in the American and Canadian obsession.  By 1910, Nikkei in Vancouver had established their first baseball club, the Nippons, which evolved into the Vancouver Asahi (meaning Rising Sun) in 1914.  In 1918, the Asahi began competing against Euro-Canadian teams in Vancouver’s “International League,” and against all-Nikkei teams based on the west coast of the United States.

The Asahi developed a strategic style of play (called “brain ball”) that enabled generally smaller-stature Nikkei to excel in competition with their Euro-Canadian counterparts.  This style, which emphasized bunting and base running to put pressure on the opponent’s defence, reflected the traditional Japanese cultural values of discipline and teamwork.  At a time when Nikkei faced unremitting discrimination, the Asahi’s athletic and sportsmanlike performances inspired both Japanese and Euro-Canadian spectators alike, and helped bridge the generation gap as a common ground of interest for Issei (immigrant Japanese) and Nisei (first generation of Japanese born in Canada). 

Before disbanding after the 1941 season, the Asahi won multiple championships in Vancouver’s senior amateur and industrial leagues, and in the eleven Pacific Northwest Japanese Baseball tournaments held in Seattle between 1928 and 1941.  Along the way, the team became an important part of the Nikkei community in Vancouver, playing most of its games at the Powell Street Grounds in the heart of “Japan Town.”

During and after the Second World War internment of Japanese Canadians, Asahi baseball players were at the vanguard of re-establishing baseball as a pillar of Nikkei social life, first in the internment camps in the British Columbia interior, and later in the various centres of resettlement. Through their skill and sportsmanship, the players helped mitigate the humiliation of internment and dispersal by reviving the baseball tradition, which served as a basis for closer integration and rapprochement between the Nikkei and Euro-Canadians before, during and after internment.  The team became a symbol of the Nikkei’s struggle for equality and respect.