Japonica Book Review
The Baseball Widow — a Novel by Suzanne Kamata
In rural Japan, the American wife of a high school baseball coach struggles with isolation
If Japan has a national religion, it’s not Buddhism or Shinto but Baseball with a capital B. Its temples are every high school in the country where the baseball teams strive to make it to the finals of the tournament known as Koshien, named after the stadium near Osaka where twice a year, a national champion is crowned on its hallowed grounds.
Koshien was where dreams came true. Ichiro Suzuki, Hideo Nomo, Hideki Irabu: they’d all first captured the nation’s imagination in this sea-scented stadium amid the rush of trains.
This may be high school, but it’s not little league. The training is more intense than the military and runs year round. At some schools, baseball practice starts at 5 AM and runs until 9 at night, after which the players still have to do their homework and prepare for school exams.
Coaching a high school baseball team is Hideki Yamada’s dream job, himself a former high school pitcher until he injured his arm. Hideki is given the impossible task of building a team from scratch at a new high school in Tokushima, a small rural city on the island of Shikoku in the…
