A Sportsworld Transforming

The principal fieldwork for this book was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Has the Hanshin Tigers sportsworld changed since then? This final chapter concludes that it has changed substantially, and it analyzes four structural changes in the Hanshin sportsworld, in Japanese professional baseball, and in the wider regional and national society that precipitated a restructuring of that world. First, there is new club management and new corporate ownership for Hanshin. Kōshien Stadium has been renovated and fan club associations have lost their autonomy and edginess. The daily sports newspapers and broadcast television are in steep decline. Finally, the NPB is under assault, both from within and because it is trapped between the growing popularity of soccer and more aggressive recruiting by MLB. These ongoing changes have rendered the Hanshin sportsworld less vibrant but more profitable than the 1990s and early 2000s. It places this reconstitution of the Hanshin sportsworld in the context of broader transformations of Japanese employment structures and Tokyo centralization, and it concludes by asserting the lessons of Hanshin for a concept of sportsworlds that is salient for future ethnographic work in critical sport studies.