Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he’s much more than that in Japan. Back home, he’s a wellspring of national pride, much like Shohei Ohtani now. His triumphs across the Pacific buoyed the nation as Japan’s economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he's much more than that in Japan. “He healed the wounds in Japan’s national psyche,” Kiyoteru Tsutsui, professor of sociology at Stanford University, told The Associated Press.

Hoping to become a two-way player in Major League Baseball just like Shohei Ohtani, 18-year-old Shotaro Morii made the rare decision to bypass Japanese professional baseball entirely and agreed to a minor league contract with the Athletics that includes a signing bonus of $1,

Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he's much more than that in Japan. Back home, he's a wellspring of national pride.

Expected to be the first Japanese player elected to the Cooperstown on Tuesday, Ichiro is a wellspring of national pride and his fame across the Pacific when he joined MLB was therapeutic for his

Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he is much more than that at home in Japan. Ichiro is a wellspring of national pride — like Shohei Ohtani now —

Ichiro Suzuki is expected to be the first Japanese player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and possibly only the second player chosen unanimously after New York

He hit 45 home runs in three seasons while also pitching at Tokyo's TOHO Junior and Senior ... Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hideki Matsui, Yu Darvish and others in MLB helped him make his decision, Morii ...

He hit 45 home runs in three seasons while also pitching at Tokyo's TOHO Junior and Senior ... Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hideki Matsui, Yu Darvish and others in MLB helped him make his decision, Morii ...

Hideki Matsui, LF/DH, 2003-12 A star for 10 seasons with the Yomiuri ... returning for two final games with Seattle in the 2019 season-opening series in Tokyo, where he made an emotional farewell. Kazuhiro Sasaki, RHP, 2000-03 Sasaki joined the Mariners ...

The art year 2025 in Tokyo is looking packed, with a hefty slate of exhibitions and events highlighting everything from cutting-edge contemporary art to thousand-year old treasures. The visionary ...

Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward plans to extend its ban on drinking on the streets to cover the entire year, while Shinjuku Ward is taking its first measures to deal with crowds of Halloween revelers.