The “Yakyu / Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game” exhibit, now open at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, tells a sweeping, richly visual story about the deep and evolving connection between Japan and America’s shared national pastime.
From the moment visitors enter, they are confronted with a suit of samurai armor presenting Japanese players as fiercely disciplined warriors across 1,800 square feet in the museum’s third‑floor Guggenheim Gallery. The first exhibit in Cooperstown to focus on trans-Pacific baseball history, it spans more than 150 years, beginning in Japan’s Meiji era and continuing to the present day.
The exhibition is organized around four main narratives.