Culture Essay, Research Paper

Reaction Paper on Culture, Personality, or Social Structure

Article:

Snyder, Eldon E. and Spreitzer, Elmer A. “Baseball in Japan.” Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology. Edited by D. Stanley Eitzen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989, 46-49.

Many things are affected by the culture that they lye in. One thing that I chose to write about is sports. Sports are greatly affected the culture. A matter of fact, one sport was invented because of different cultures clashing. Soccer was played by cultures for some recreation and leisure. Soccer evolved from one culture conquering another, and then playing with the skulls of the ones they conquered. It is now evolved into the most popular sport in the world. In many South American countries, soccer is the most played sport due to its popularity among its people. So the culture of these countries dictate what sports will be popular. American football would not be a very popular sport because it is not in their culture to enjoy such a sport.

The article I chose to do was titled “Baseball in Japan,” written by Eldon E. Snyder and Elmer A. Spreitzer. First, these authors described that baseball was first introduced to some Tokyo University students by way of their American professor in 187(pg. 46).

It is extremely popular in Japan, especially at the high school level, where at one tournament it “lasts ten days and draws about 500,000 spectators in addition to a nationwide television audience” (pg. 46).

A major characteristic of Japanese culture is loyalty. This loyalty is transferred to the game of baseball, also. Unlike American baseball, players and managers are loyal to their team and organization. American baseball is all about free agents and trades and how much the individual can get. One of Japanese baseball’s characteristics is for the players to think of team first. Only selected American players are allowed to play in the Japanese leagues. “The Japanese recruit the Americans with serious attention paid to personal character and personality traits” (pg. 47).

Most Americans cannot understand the Japanese culture. Their culture consists of things such as hard work, loyalty, teamwork and cohesiveness. These people have their own separate views on different things; but these views are ‘put on the back burner’ when work begins.

American culture is very different to this culture because of the many different people that live in the United States. The teamwork philosophy is not prevalent in the work world. In American baseball, the individual seeks the most he can get out of a deal-salary, holdouts, etc. “In Japanese baseball, doing your own thing is strongly stigmatized-salary disputes, asking for individual exemptions from team policies, temper tantrums, moodiness, complaining clubhouse lawyers, attacking the umpire, criticizing the manager, mouthing-off to the media, bad-mouthing teammates, violation of training rules, fist fights, and ad nauseam” (pg. 49). In our society, the aforementioned acts are almost essential to American baseball. Although people complain about contracts and irreverent behavior, these things are what keep the sport interesting to the American public.

As you can see, culture and people’s values greatly affect the sports that are played in a certain civilization. The respectful, quiet, and hard working society of Japan influence Japanese baseball just as much as the individualized and lazy society of America influence American baseball.