Isao Harimoto, who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima as a child and had more hits than anyone else in Japanese baseball history, died on Wednesday in Tokyo. He was 86.
His death at the hospital was announced by the Meikyukai, or Golden Players Club, one of Japan’s baseball halls of fame. There is no such thing as it has been said.
Harimoto earned the nickname Hit Machine for collecting a record 3,085 of them in a long career that spanned from the late 1950s to the early ’80s. He won seven league batting titles.
He was the only player to collect 3,000 hits in Japan. (Ichiro Suzuki had 4,367, but more than 3,000 came after he moved to the American majors).
But Harimoto was far from a great hitter; 504 of those hits are home runs, placing him seventh on Japan’s all-time list. He also stole 399 bases, was awarded MVP and was an 18-time All Star.
After his time as a player, he became a serious commentator on the game.
Isao Harimoto was born on June 19, 1940 in Hiroshima, Japan, to Korean parents who had emigrated the year before. His Korean name was Jang Hun. His mother, Pak Sun Bun, was a cook and his father, Jang Sang Jeong, sold scrap metal and various secondhand goods from a cart.
Isao was 5 when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city, about 1500 from where he lived. “There was an immense flash and noise,” he told the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper in 2011. “The next thing I knew, my mother was shielding me and my sister, three years older, with her body, even though her back was covered in blood from flying glass shards.”
Things at home were not often discussed. “My mother wanted to forget, I think she wanted to erase her memory of that day,” said Mainichi, a Japanese English-language newspaper, in 2020. She lost her sister Jang Jeom Ja in the bombing, and her mother burned all her photos, she said. He did not publicly discuss the cataclysm until well after his baseball career.
He was proud of his Korean heritage, despite being bullied for it as a child and facing prejudice throughout his life.
“A lot of ethnic Koreans in Japan assimilate into Japanese society,” Robert Whiting, author of “You Gotta Have Wa” (1989), the definitive book in English about Japanese baseball, said in an interview. “Harimoto didn’t. He talked about the fact that his mother never spoke Japanese in the house, and he was very proud.”
Harimoto was also critical of other athletes in Japan with Korean backgrounds who hid their ethnicity. Only late in life did he become a Japanese citizen.
The boy burned his right hand in an accident, an event that contributed to his desire to become a left-handed hitter when he took up baseball in the fifth grade. Despite his talent, he lost a few chances at the top because of his reputation as a troublemaker, or because he didn’t deserve it.
In 1958, he visited South Korea for the first time with a group of Korean-Japanese high school students. She met her parents and later said she really connected with her Korean roots for the first time.
His strict and disciplined approach to batting, and his ability to consistently hit the middle, soon led him to the top of the league. In 1959, playing with the Tokyo-based Toei Flyers, he hit .275, good enough to be named rookie of the year. He got much better in the next two seasons, hitting .302 and then .336. He played left field, and the field was not strong enough, but as Caesar, he performed strongly and consistently for two decades.
Many teams in Japan were not selected for the leagues. He was part of a Japan Series-winning team just once, in 1962, when the Flyers beat the Hanshin Tigers in seven games. He was also named the Pacific’s most valuable player this year. (The Flyers adopted their current name, the Nippon Ham Fighters during their time with the team).
Harimoto’s most spectacular season was 1970, when he hit .383 with 34 home runs and 100 RBI, all career highs.
He was a big player by Japan league standards at the time, listed at 5-foot-11 and 187 pounds. And they were not afraid of the fans, American or Japanese, who were still older. “If there was a fight in the field, he was always in the middle,” Brutus said. “He was a scary guy, nobody wanted to fight him. He wasn’t afraid to show his spirit and challenge people on the field.”
Despite Harimoto’s fighting success, he could never shake the reputation in Japan that they were a bit of a bad boy. He got drunk and got involved in a few fights.
He moved to the Yomiuri Giants in 1976 and the Lotte Orions in 1980. He retired after 41 seasons in 1981.
After these games, Harimoto became a commentator in the game with a reputation for saying what he felt. “It doesn’t seem to have a filter,” White said. “The Japanese game was very protective and critical of the players who went to the States to play, they thought they were loyal to Japan’s league.”
Harimoto worked for the Korea Baseball Organization and helped establish the country’s national league in 1982, though he later believes he got into a rift with the group due to contempt.
Speaking out against nuclear weapons was also a big part of his later life. “What is greater: protecting human life or possessing nuclear weapons?” he asked in The Chugoku Shimbun in 2011. “These are two bars. It is inhumane to allow weapons that can extinguish people in a moment when they are just trying to live as best they can.”