Superstar Shohei Ohtani for Prime Minister

(Bloomberg Opinion) — It’s the time of year when warm spring winds blow through Tokyo, heralding the coming of cherry blossoms that will briefly drape the city in pink. But this year, there’s a fleeting arrival that’s even more exciting.  

Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers phenom and Japan’s most famous sporting export, is back in town for Major League Baseball’s opening day game against the Chicago Cubs. The city is abuzz for the event: Nearly 100,000 seats over two nights at Tokyo Dome sold out in moments. Resale tickets are changing hands for amounts approaching $13,500. Think of the hype when Taylor Swift visited your city. Then double or triple it. 

It’s a triumphant return home for a man who moved to the US in late 2017, and who this time last year was under a cloud of suspicion. It was at the season opener in Seoul in 2024 that allegations first surfaced of illicit gambling involving his then-interpreter and friend, Ippei Mizuhara, who was subsequently convicted and sentenced to jail for stealing $17 million from Ohtani. 

Now, he has it all: World Series champion. The founder, and only member, of the 50-50 club. Soon to be a father. And, in case you’ve forgotten since he didn’t show it last season: he might be a better pitcher than he is a hitter. 

He’s unavoidable in Japan: his face adorns ads for cosmetics, mattresses, English conversation schools and, most recently, convenience store rice balls. Elementary schoolchildren named him “the person you most admire” — surpassing both “mom” and “dad” — in an annual survey this month.

His life sometimes seems like it was lifted straight from the pages of fiction, with his determination and heart reminiscent of the protagonist of a baseball manga. Hailing from a small town in Iwate prefecture, an area devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, he laid out his goals from an early age and set about accomplishing them with unnerving single-mindedness. Delayed a few years from his original target of moving to the US straight out of school, he won the Japan Series and then went stateside, still far earlier than other local players. 

Spurning better deals, he joined the Los Angeles Angels as they were one of the few to let him pursue his unlikely quest to be the first man since Babe Ruth to be both ace pitcher and hitter. Even when he finally got his big payday at the Dodgers, he deferred almost all of his salary to free up resources to boost the team. The only grumbles you hear about him are how his achievements overshadow almost everything else, such as the stunning upset victory of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars in last year’s Japan Series. 

In a country where admirable public figures are these days in short supply — from sexual misconducts that have in recent years claimed the careers of some of its most prominent comedians and musicians, to the never-ending funding scandals involving the ruling party — Ohtani’s purity is refreshing. Have we tried putting him in charge of the country? At the rate things are going with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his brewing political gift scandal, there might shortly be a vacancy. 

I have been wondering lately if Ohtani also represents something more about modern Japan: if anything, it’s too good value. The Nippon Ham-Fighters, his team before he moved to the US, received just $20 million when he left — compared to, say, the $195 million the 19-year-old French football star Killian Mbappe cost Paris Saint-Germain around the same time. 

The situation is even worse with his new teammate Roki Sasaki, a 23-year-old pitching ace who joined the Dodgers this year in a deal that will reportedly net his old team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, just $1.6 million. Sasaki himself is considered an “amateur” under MLB rules because he doesn’t have the requisite years of experience necessary under the arcane “posting” system that governs the conditions under which Japanese players can move abroad. 

The whole situation reminds me of the bargains that Japan offers. Just as baseball scouts are combing the country looking for talent, private equity is stalking its cut-price firms. Offers are coming in for sleeping corporate giants like Seven & i Holdings. From the $5 bowls of ramen to the scandalously low salaries that are common for everyone from software engineers entering the workforce to the chief executive officers who get better results for a fraction of what they’d make elsewhere, Japan is too cheap by half. 

In sports, of course, it’s easier to transfer these talents internationally. That’s why boxing pound-for-pound great Naoya Inoue is taking his game to Las Vegas and allying with Saudi Arabia’s money after spending most of the last several years fighting in his home country. 

Defeating cheap Japan will be tough — even just in baseball, there are lots of discussions about reforming the posting system, but little agreement. In the meantime, the country might take heart from the likes of Ohtani, Sasaki and Inoue, and be willing to take more risks on the global stage. Like the cherry blossoms, Ohtani’s career will, before you know it, have come and gone. For a generation who grew up seeing them among the best in the world, the memories will live on. 

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Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan and the Koreas. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia, and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief.

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