Review of You Gotta Have Wa

Book Review: You Gotta Have Wa

Author: Robert Whiting

Reviewer: Mark Groenewold

Robert Whiting, author of “Tokyo Underground”, as well as co-writer for “Slugging it Out in Japan”, has put together this very interesting text on the history, the culture, and the experiences of expatriate professional baseball players in Japanese baseball. Taking us back to the origins of the game as it developed in Japan and as it has evolved into the modern phenomenon and monster it has become, Whiting has articulated a masterful, and exhaustively researched text on the topic. For anyone interested in baseball, sports, or how anyone can really cope and live in Japan, this is a fascinating read.

The title of the book, “You Gotta Have Wa” is an extremely evocative, if not enigmatic one. “What is this ‘Wa’”? you may ask, and “Why do I gotta have it?” In short, although some Japanophile blabber-mouths may wax more eloquently, “Wa” is what Japanese would call “experience of calmness or reflection”, or “a spirit of tranquility and peace”, or something along those lines. What is curious is that “Wa” is also used in Japanese writing in words like “Hei-wa” (peace) and “Wa-fu” (Japanese style). To some extent, we may draw the line that the Japanese perceive themselves as the embodiment of “Wa”, of “peace and tranquility”. The irony of the title is that it seems to act like a warning to professional expatriate ball players (or maybe all foreigners trying to live in Japan) that in order to get by in this country, to really succeed or fit in, “you gotta have (Japanese-ness) Wa”.

So, what is this “Wa”? A very generous reader may say something along the lines of, “In order to work and play with the Japanese it is important to look to the same virtues that they themselves do, and strive to find common ground within a higher purpose. The Japanese prize “wa” above other virtues, and it is this cooperative and collective synchronicity that is the reason why Japan is as successful as it is.”

A less generous reading may be something along the lines of, “The notion of “wa”, while having roots in a rich and vibrant past of the Japanese people, has since then been mutated and twisted as a crude tool to subjugate and oppress individualism and creative processes and approaches which fall outside normatively acceptable standards of behavior among the Japanese. There is no real “wa” in Japan anymore. There is only alienation, hopelessness, facelessness, and anonymity in the herd. There is nothing “peaceful” or “tranquil” about the slow and tedious destruction of the human spirit. It is nothing more than silent tyranny.”

What it is that Whiting is driving at in the usage of this nifty title is not so easy to discern. Read the book for yourself and make your own decision.

Should you pick up this marvelous text, you will find out a number of surprising things that go on in Japanese baseball. You will learn all about the significance of high school baseball to the Japanese psyche, the requirements for working as a “professional” member of a team’s cheering squad, the arrangements and treatment of foreign players in the Japanese leagues, and the huge gaping differences between how baseball is played in the Major League and how it is done in Japan. All this and much more! This is a terrific book. It demonstrates clearly how the adage, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull” boy an impossibility here. “All play is work. Work is never play” is the more culturally appropriate twist on this theme. Even if you are not interested in baseball as a game in the slightest, this text offers any reader interested in exploring cultural differences a great platform to examining the Japanese. “You Gotta Have Wa” takes a good hard look into the Japanese collective mind in action, and documents it in the detail that any statistics junkie can appreciate, complete with balls, strikes, and RBI’s.

There is no joy in Tokyo-ville. Japanese baseball, for this reader, always strikes out.

Batter up!

Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
September, 2004