earticle

영어

This study uses a Transpacific transnationalism lens to explain how baseball?introduced initially to Brazil by U.S. expatriates?took root through Japanese migration. Existing literature separated American diffusion, Nikkei community history, and global sport business; combining mega-region and transnationalism theory, this study proposes the Transpacific Transnational Social Field to integrate these strands. Japanese immigrants transformed weekend colonia play into organized clubs (Mikado, Alianca), regional leagues, and the 1936 All-Brazil Tournament; after wartime rupture, the 1958 immigration semicentennial ballpark, Japanese corporate sponsorship, and the 1990 founding of the CBBS scaled the game nationally and globally, enabling milestones such as WBC participation. These circulations moved not only players but equipment supply chains, coaching philosophies, and ritual forms that tethered local identity to wider Pacific imaginaries. In doing so, the study extends Brazilian sport historiography beyond soccer and shows how migrant leisure practices can crystallize into durable civic and institutional infrastructure. The continued prevalence of Japanese surnames alongside rising non-Nikkei participation signals a shift from an ethnic enclave sport toward a multicultural Brazilian baseball culture; the sport’s growth closely tracks Nikkei migration and settlement. Limitations include reliance on secondary sources, insufficient Japanese- and Portuguese-language primary and oral history materials, incomplete longitudinal statistics, and the absence of comparative Transpacific sport cases, all of which constrain generalization. Future research should broaden multilingual archival and oral history work, assemble standardized time-series datasets, and pursue comparative studies to test and refine the Transpacific Transnational Social Field model. Policy-focused studies linking school physical education, municipal facility development, and diaspora partnerships could evaluate how such transnational infrastructures foster broader intercultural inclusion.