Long considered America’s official pastime, ever since baseball was introduced to Japan in the late 19th century, the sport has become a mutual obsession between the two nations. A key factor in bridging the cultural gap between East and West, baseball has also been used as a way to combat anti-Japanese prejudices in the US from WWII to the present day. Documentarian Yuriko Gamo Romer (Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful) traces the long, shared history behind our mutual love of the old ballgame, from Japan’s embrace of Black players in the 1930s to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and their fellow all-stars playing exhibition games overseas to the era of contemporary MLB heavy hitters like Ichiro Suzuki, Hideo Nomo, and (of course) Shohei Ohtani. Diamond Diplomacy is a fascinating and definitive look at how nine innings changed the way two countries communicate across a great divide. Play ball! —David Fear
Yuriko Gamo Romer
Award-winning director Yuriko Gamo Romer’s recent films explore the cultural and political dimensions of sport. Her short Baseball Behind Barbed Wire, about World War II Japanese American incarceration, won Best Short Documentary at the Chandler International Film Festival and Waco Film Festival. Mrs. Judo about Keiko Fukuda, first woman 10th-degree black belt in judo, screened at 25+ festivals and aired on PBS. Romer’s thesis film Occidental Encounters won the Student Academy Award (Gold) and the Jimmy Stewart Memorial Award, Heartland Film Festival. Born in Japan and raised in the US, Romer holds an MFA in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University.