As a rambunctious boy growing up in Hiroshima, he was reportedly known as a “gonta,” a local dialect word meaning “mischievous boy” or perhaps something closer to “little hellion.”
Japanese baseball legend Isao Harimoto (1940–2026) sounded a little rueful when, later in life, he recalled his rowdy childhood. Forever getting into scraps, he admitted, almost apologetically, that he had caused his mother no end of grief.
He was 5 years old when Hiroshima was devastated by the atomic bombing in 1945. He fled on his mother’s back, her body covered in blood. A sister six years his senior died from burns covering her entire body.
After the war, his mother opened a grilled-meat restaurant and raised three children. The family lived in a humble row house beneath a corrugated tin roof. They were poor.
Bent on becoming a ballplayer, Harimoto left for high school in Osaka.
He entered the rough-and-tumble world of high school baseball of the day. Hazing at the hands of upperclassmen was simply the way of things; all that counted was being good at the game.
A scandal cost him his chance to play at Koshien, the storied stage that is the holy grail of Japanese high school baseball.
He also experienced the discrimination that came with his Korean nationality. “There’s no use going on living,” he thought. He tasted the piercing bitterness of being at the very bottom of despair.
News of his recent death brings back one unforgettable encounter I had with the seven-time batting champion and Nippon Professional Baseball’s all-time hits leader with 3,085 to his name.
Some 30 years ago, I sat down with him at a cafe in Kobe. As I moved to take a photo, a member of staff told me, “We’d ask you kindly to refrain.”
I was apologizing and putting my camera away when Harimoto spoke up, gently.
“This young fellow is just trying to do his job. Just one quick photo, please.”
Perhaps he took pity on the hapless reporter. He even bowed to the other customers. “It’ll only be me in the picture, so please bear with me,” he said in Hiroshima dialect.
The staff, smiling now, nodded their assent.
His plain manner of speaking that spared no one could stir controversy from time to time.
That he was cherished all the same may be because, every now and then, he reminded us of something we ourselves had set down somewhere and forgotten.
There was in him a strength—and a tenderness—that belong only to a man who has wept, over and over, at the unfairness of the world.
—The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 11
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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.