Word: shoriki
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Died. Matsutaro Shoriki, 84, Japanese newspaper publisher who brought the grand old game of besuboru to his homeland; of a heart attack; in Tokyo. In 1924, Shoriki purchased the dying Tokyo daily Yomiuri (circ. 40,000) and as a promotional gimmick sponsored visits by American baseball teams featuring such stars as Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. The tours were overwhelming successes, and the game soon became as popular in Japan as in the U.S. Today, Yomiuri's circulation is 5.1 million, in no small part because of the thoroughness of its baseball coverage...
...side activities began with Yomiuri, in fact, after the paper's president, Matsutaro Shoriki, decided to bring Babe Ruth and other baseball stars to Japan for a tour in 1934. The tour was a hit and raised the paper's circulation by 50,000, though Shoriki was stabbed by an ultranationalist who took offense when the Americans played ball on the grounds of a Shinto shrine. Last October Shoriki, now 83, staged an exhibit of Tibetan art treasures and invited the Dalai Lama to attend. When he arrived, Red China got so angry at this "sinister activity" that...
Pray Boru! Immodest as his words may sound, Shoriki is right. His optometrists consider him terribly myopic, but time after time he has proved himself dazzlingly farsighted. In the 1930s he introduced besuboru to Japan by bringing Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx and Lefty O'Doul to the Orient for a barnstorming tour. An ultranationalist fanatic later hefted a broadsword and hacked a 16-in. scar into the left side of his head for permitting foreigners like the Bambino to desecrate sacred Meiji Stadium, but Shoriki went on to form Japan's first professional baseball league...
...that, Shoriki is also Japan's biggest newspaper publisher. The Yomiuri, a dying daily with a circulation of 40,000 when he bought it with borrowed money in 1924, is now tops in Tokyo, with 2,440,000.* His Hochi Shimbun (circ. 600,000) is the country's biggest sports daily. With two other dailies and three magazines, Shoriki's empire grossed $74.5 million last year, and though post-tax profits were a rice-paper-thin $550,000, he had no complaint. Shoriki's television ventures in Tokyo and Osaka netted $2,300,000, while...
...Hara-Kiri. After graduating from Tokyo University in 1911 with a degree in German law, Shoriki flunked the civil service exam that would have opened the way to a government career; he joined the Tokyo police force instead. By 1924 he was a deputy police chief, but that year he was sacked in disgrace after having inadequately guarded the prince regent (now Emperor Hirohito) during a botched assassination attempt...