Nippon ichi!

[Aaron Gerow]

Yesterday, the baseball team based in Sapporo, the Nippon Ham Fighters, 
defeated the Chunichi Dragons (from Nagoya), by a score of 4-1, thus 
winning their fourth game and the cementing victory in the Japan 
Series. Since my wife is from Hokkaido, this is certainly a wonderful 
event for us, but you might be asking, why mention this on a film 
mailing list?

Well, the last time this team won the Japanese championship was 44 
years ago when it had another name: the Toei Flyers. Sound familiar? 
Yes, at that time, the team was owned by the Toei Studios, the 
producers of Nakamura Kinnosuke samurai movies and all those yakuza 
films starring Takakura Ken or directed by Fukasaku Kinji or Kato Tai. 
In the days when movies were the king of the entertainment world in 
Japan, most of the film studios owned professional baseball teams which 
are the ancestors of today's current teams. From what I remember, there 
was the Shochiku Robins (now the Yokohama BayStars), the Daiei Unions 
(now Chiba Lotte), and perhaps you can say the Hankyu Braves (now the 
Orix Buffaloes--Toho is part of the Hankyu group).

So congratulations to the descendants of the Toei Flyers!

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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