Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

BASEBALL • 49
and be educated in America. Along with Yamakawa, Umeko Tsuda,
another of the five Japanese girls from the Iwakura Mission and later
the most well-known proponent of education for Japanese women,
became a close friend of Alice Mabel Bacon. Bacon traveled to Japan
in the 1890s and early 1900s to write and teach. For two years, she
taught daughters of the political nobility at the Peer’s School in
Tokyo. Her books, especially A Japanese Interior (1893) and Japanese
Girls and Women (1902), were widely read in both Japan and the
United States. See also YATOI.
BAKER, HOWARD HENRY, JR. (15 NOVEMBER 1925– ).
Howard Baker served as U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1967 to
1985 and as White House chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan
from 1987 to 1989. Then, he served as U.S. ambassador to Japan
from 2001 to 2005. During his incumbency, multiple terrorist attacks
took place in the United States on 11 September 2001. Ambassador
Baker had to carry out delicate negotiations with Japan concerning
the dispatch of Japanese Self-Defense Forces vessels to the Indian
Ocean. On 29 October 2001, Tokyo enacted the Anti-Terrorism
Special Measures Law that enabled the Japanese government to dispatch
the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) abroad during wartime. In November
2001, Tokyo dispatched the Maritime Self-Defense Force to
the Indian Ocean.
On March 2003, the U.S. invasion of Iraq began. Ambassador
Baker played an important role in encouraging the Junichiro
Koizumi Cabinet to dispatch the SDF to Iraq. On 26 July 2003,
Tokyo enacted the Special legislation calling for assistance in the
rebuilding of Iraq by which the Japanese Self-Defense Forces were
dispatched to Iraq. On 16 January 2004, Tokyo dispatched an advance
party of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force to Iraq.
Ambassador Baker also conducted negotiations to gain Tokyo’s
acceptance of the importance of Missile Defense (MD). In December
2003, Japan decided to adopt the MD system.
BASEBALL. Baseball is one of the four major professional sports in
the United States along with American football, basketball, and ice
hockey. In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings was established as the
first professional baseball team in the United States (later, Reds).