ESPN Online Does Ichiro

[Junko Tanaka]

Very interesting article indeed (and how much Ichiro resembles his daddy)!

Speaking of Ichiro and other Japanese major leaguers, I've been wondering
how much Japanese broadcasters are paying (to MLB?)  to air games. Ichiro
and Matsui are covered almost everyday on TV in Japan - not only in short
news coverage but also in full 2-hour games. I can even get suspicious that
having Japanese players in MLB is a huge plus in what it can bring: rights
to sell, media people and tourists travelling to the US, licensed
merchandise, etc. This whole thing overlaps with the Winter Sonata boom for
me.

I'd appreciate it if anyone can fill me in on the value of Ichiro as a media
content.

Junko Tanaka

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Anderson" <ander025 at umn.edu>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 1:07 PM
Subject: ESPN Online Does Ichiro


> Jim Caple of ESPN has a smart feature article on Ichiro today that
> wrestles with the hunger for Asian exoticism and gets over it. It's
> still  framed in national categories, Japanese vs. American, but Caple
> concludes Ichiro is a hybrid. Pretty good job for mass media, I thought.
> He certainly does better than a lot of Euro film studies people do.
> Don't even get me started on the New York Times' periodic cultural
> essentialist meltdowns. The best thing about this article is that
> sometimes it's even funny. Check it out: The Art of Being Ichiro
> <http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=ichiro&num=1>
>
>
>                                             Mark Anderson
>