Tim Kün
Tokyo – I saw a picture of hei ohtani shoes wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. I stared from the vending machine while standing in a field of green tea leaves and a bottle of iced tea on my left. I saw two otanis – two otanis, perhaps the same legendary luxurious sleeper sitting on a sleep tech mattress pad. One Otani wears a short sleeve shirt and has a baseball bat that looks like a right-handed batter. The other is wearing a long sleeve shirt, but no bat. Otanis, whose eyes seem to be chasing me from the walls of Tokyo Dome, wears the same look. This is the same expression you see in a tea field, and can only be described as the appearance of someone dreaming of returning to their batting cage.
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Otani on electronic billboards looks down at me from three different directions above the famous Shibuya intersection, the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, representing the scent of New Balance, Dip (HR and recruiting companies that represent dreams, ideas, and passions), and Kose. He wears the same look 100 feet tall next to the New Uku building and beside several Seiko watches. There are many otanis, and many of them have the exact same appearance, so it is thought to be one stock image reconstructed to serve an endless number of purposes.
Convenience store Otani is covered in banners on the front of almost every FamilyMart store, and while promoting the MLB World Tour: Tokyo Series, he has an onigiri (Japanese rice ball) and I wonder how long this will probably take.
I watched TV Otani, put on an apron and prepare and eat a bowl of ramen with my own onion chopped – something commercial selling something food that was blurry to everything else. Relaxing but accurate, it is some of his best works. I’ve seen him standing on the beach kicking a soccer ball for people with green tea. I’ve seen the morph from Dodger Otani to Otani Samurai at the Fortnite location, but it’s hard to know which is more impressive. Television Ohtani is the implicit presence of a T-shirt ad featuring the artist’s dog image, Decoy. (It seems someone there is meant to push the boundaries of fame.)
TV Otani should not be confused with taxi TV Otani, who appears to be running in an endless backseat loop. On the first day, the team worked in Tokyo. The huge screen in front of Tokyo Dome played a mashup of a commercial starring Otani, starring the series’ promotional spots scattered with long people standing next to it, pointing their phones on the screen.
“The impact of shoe hei in Japan is impossible to exaggerate,” says Dodgers President Andrew Friedman. “We thought we understood that, but you can’t fully grasp it until you see it and live.”
Otani carries himself as he knows that he is alone, as he knows that every eye in every room is focused on him. Here, in his home country, the truth is beyond the boundaries of exaggeration. He has been here for seven years as nothing more than an on-screen appearance (many, many screens), but his presence is by no means more than a street corner. Baseball fans are planning summer days with Dodgers games, but most of them start late in the morning. It feels like it’s more fame than anyone else that humans think can contain.
“Every time I go to Japan,” says Friedman.
Otani’s mother, Kayoko, handles his business deal in Japan, and she is clearly killing it. The word is that he is wise in his choice to accept trade, but it is difficult to imagine him waning so much.
It all emphasizes the value of Ohatani. Not only for myself, but for the baseball in general and the Dodgers in particular. For six days, Tokyo was one huge ATM. MLB has set up a 30,000-square-foot store at Tokyo Dome to sell Dodgers and Cubs products. From logo-printed cookies to otani towels, it’s deep enough to check the size of your otani jersey. (You could have parked your car in front of the Cubs Gear.) Topps has put together a very cool, four-storey baseball card display in Shibuya, round the corner from three looming Ohatanis. Two donations from Otani were included. The base he stole to complete last year’s 50/50 season, and the bat he used in the World Series. His contract with Topps won about $7 million for the company last season alone, company sources say card collection is relatively new in Japan. However, because the stamp gathering is a proven crowd delight, Topps has made sure to include one in the exhibit.
Japan Airlines has an Ohatani themed plane with his face three times on either side of the torso, travel agents across Japan run tours to help fans travel to Los Angeles and watch Otani play. The Dodger Stadium concession stands and signs are very different from two seasons ago. And it is estimated that an estimated $65 million annual approval revenue in 2024 – about $58 million more than most baseball players and second-placed player Bryce Harper.
Otani’s fame is enough to make it possible for him to be imprisoned. He has a feud in Japan running with Fuji TV after flying a drone over a house he bought in Los Angeles and airing footage. After the Dodgers won the World Series, he refused to interview the network. However, his fame was not as surprising as when the Dodgers plane arrived at Haneda Airport on March 13th. Almost 1,000 Japanese fans were crowded outside customs to get a glimpse of Ohatani, but the airport set up white walls that served as a tunnel to open players to the public, captivating Ohatani fans.
“That’s a shame, but it’s a security issue,” says Atshushura, executive and former director of professional baseball in Japan. “If Otani leaves the hotel and walks down the street, it becomes a police issue.”
The scenes in and around Tokyo Dome in four exhibition games and two regular season games are probably best described as controlled civil mayhem. Four hours before the first pitch on the first day, the crowd was very thick in the shopping area outside the stadium, making it difficult to move around. Most people were able to stand in the chunks and raise their phones to film the latest big-name commercial play videos on the massive screens around them.
(Inside the Dodgers clubhouse, all the charms of the middle school locker room, the most notable feature was a smoking capsule that resembles a phone booth, showing where smokers aimed for maximum ventilation, including bull eyes on the wall.
Before every pitch, before the pitch to Otani, it felt like the whole building was holding its breath, then exhaling one massive breath. As a result, foul balls, swings, misses, takes – had the same reaction. And when Otani hit Homer with the appearance of the second plate in Tokyo, he sent the ball midway to the right of the Tokyo Giants.
After the match, Giants Manager Shinnosuke was asked if he had the opportunity to talk to Otani. “Yes,” he said. “I saw him in the batting cage,” he pauses for a moment, as if to decide whether to move forward or not. “Some people may not like this,” he said, “but I asked if I could take a photo with him.”
There were five Japanese players in the Tokyo Series, but it could be difficult to convey. Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto occasionally appears in ads at train stations for energy drinks on the ground. Yamamoto’s job, along with sidekick Suzuki Ki, is clearly to recruit young Japanese consumers to experience the joys of concentrated caffeine.
However, in reality, there are Otanis, and they are always just Otani and at first glance ohtani. “It’s hard to imagine him being more famous than he’s in America,” says Dodgers rookie reliever Jack Dreyer, “But that’s certainly true.” In Otani’s home prefecture in the far northeastern part of Honshu, I passed a gas station with rows of tire racks covered in tarps decorated with pictures of Otani. A nearby sign declared “over 300,000 tires are on sale.” It was unclear whether the seller was Otani or the station.
“What he is achieving and what he has already achieved is something from the comic book,” Ihara says. “Like a comic book superhero, you’re going to think no one can do that in real life. He shows us that we have no human limitations. That’s the inspiration he offers us on a continuous basis.”
Otani played four games in Tokyo. Two counted, two not, but that seemed unimportant. He was here in his body, playing baseball in Japan for the first time in eight seasons. And then he went back to his new life, going back to screens and vending images, on top of a convenience store, anywhere, anywhere, somehow both are at once.
