Nikkei Chronicles #9—More Than a Game: Nikkei Sports
What makes Nikkei sports more than just a game for you? Perhaps you’d like to write about your Nikkei sports hero or the impact of Japanese athletes on your Nikkei identity. Did your parents meet through a Nikkei basketball or bowling league? Are you intrigued by an important chapter of Nikkei sports history, like the prewar Issei and Nisei baseball teams?
For the ninth edition of Nikkei Chronicles, Discover Nikkei solicited stories related to Nikkei sports from June to October of 2020. Voting closed on November 30, 2020. We received 31 stories (19 English; 6 Japanese; 7 Spanish; and 1 Portuguese), with a few submitted in multiple languages. We asked an editorial committee to pick their favorites and our Nima-kai community to vote for their favorite stories. Here are the selected favorite stories.
Editorial Committee’s Favorites
- ENGLISH:
Why Coach Sports? Bob Kodama’s Legacy Coaching Youth Sports
By Michael Kodama - JAPANESE:
Family History of Kenichi Doi, Vancouver Asahi pitcher in 1926
By Yobun Shima - SPANISH:
60th Anniversary: Close to the Heart
By Luis Iguchi Iguchi - PORTUGUESE:
Our Daily Radio Taiso Workouts
By Edna Hiromi Ogihara Cardoso
Nima-kai Favorite:
- 33 Stars
My Love and Life in Sports
By Robert “Lefty” Kikkawa, Ken Kikkawa
<<Community Partner: Terasaki Budokan - Little Tokyo Service Center>>
Stories from this series
The Dodgers’ Japan Connections: From the 1956 Japan Tour to Hideo Nomo
July 9, 2020 • Daijiro Don Kanase
In 1956, the Brooklyn Dodgers traveled to Japan for a 20-game exhibition tour following the end of their baseball season. This began the Dodgers organization’s relationships with Japanese baseball that included subsequent goodwill tours, visits by Japanese professional players to spring training at Vero Beach, and a Japanese stone lantern that still stands at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. All of these relationships culminated in the Dodgers’ signing of Hideo Nomo. Dodgers team historian, Mark Langill, recently shared the fascinating …
Making a Splash: Nikkei Role Models in Swimming
July 7, 2020 • Kate Iio
I joined a swim team in Southern California when I was 8 years old and before I knew it, swimming became the biggest part of my identity. If I wasn’t at school, I was in the pool. My weekends were reserved for swim meets from the early mornings to evenings. My conversations were always swimming-related because my friends were mainly swimmers. I gained nicknames from my teammates, and even schoolmates, such as “the Olympic swimmer” and “Kato” (I am actually …
The world of Marcela Castillo Tokumori
July 2, 2020 • Enrique Higa Sakuda , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
2019 is the second best year of Marcela Castillo Tokumori's sports career. At the Pan American Games in Lima he won the silver medal in the poomsae modality in taekwondo. If the Games became a great national holiday, it was thanks to people like her. His best year was 2016. That's when his career took off. She was world runner-up and achieved elite athlete status. By a happy coincidence, her two greatest achievements took place in Lima, so her family …