"Rounding the Bases is the first history of Japanese Little League from its beginnings on the peripheries of U.S. military bases in the 1950s through its evolution into one of the largest and most successful national youth sports programs in the world. Based on dozens of interviews with both American and Japanese principals, corroborated by a wide range of published and unpublished print and audio-visual materials, the book discovers previously unknown or forgotten facts as well as individuals whose accomplishments ought to be acknowledged. The author uncovers organizational laxity that resulted in questionable funding and uneven World Series entries in its first years after founding in 1964. With the emergence of a well-organized, well-funded regional organization in Osaka, the program sent championship teams to the World Series in 1967 and 1968. A serendipitous encounter in the late 1960s led to Mitsui Bussan and Fuji-Sankei corporations' commitment of stable support that continues to this day. The book tells Little League Japan's story on the ground "who did what, when, where, and why, and how the inevitable complications were overcome" in the context of the various more well-known arenas of Japanese baseball (nanshiki rubber leagues, junior and senior high school, and the professional game). It evaluates common assumptions about the cultural idiosyncrasies of Japanese baseball culture, and examines the pragmatic structural characteristics of Little League in Japan that distinguish it from the American model. Rounding the Bases also explores how this American import was impacted by larger phenomena in the history of postwar Japan including: Japanese responses to American Cold War geo-strategic and cultural policies; a 1960s revival of pride in Japanese cultural ideologies that had been discredited by defeat in WWII (namely confidence in self-styled bushido baseball notions of seishinsei and konj); increasing affluence that allowed features of middle class lifestyles such as adult-organized youth sport activities to emerge; the rise of corporate management of those lifestyles; and the liberalization of Japanese social attitudes about individual autonomy beginning in the late twentieth century."--