Shigeo Nagashima, lifetime honorary manager of the Yomiuri Giants, became the first person chosen from the world of baseball to receive the Order of Culture on Tuesday.
The government announced on the day the recipients of the Order of Culture, as well as Persons of Cultural Merit, for fiscal 2021.
There were nine recipients of the Order of Culture, including the 85-year-old Nagashima. He is the second person from the sports world to be so honored since swimmer Hironoshin Furuhashi, who received the award in fiscal 2008.
Nagashima joined the Yomiuri Giants in 1958 after graduating from Rikkyo University and quickly became a clutch player, hitting a game-ending homer in a game watched by Emperor Showa the following year. He helped elevate baseball to the status of a national sport and was often called Mr. Baseball.
He became a Person of Cultural Merit in 2005 and received the People's Honor Award together with Hideki Matsui, 47, who cut a brilliant figure with the New York Yankees in the U.S. major leagues.
Nagashima carried the Olympic torch in the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games alongside fellow baseball icons Matsui and Sadaharu Oh, 81.
Among the other Order of Culture recipients for fiscal 2021 were meteorology and climatology specialist Syukuro Manabe, 90, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year, and molecular biologist Tsuneko Okazaki, 88.
They were joined by tanka poet Hirohiko Okano, 97; anthropologist Junzo Kawada, 87; western-style painter Koji Kinutani, 78; kabuki actor Onoe Kikugoro, 79; ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer Asami Maki, 87; and mathematician Shigefumi Mori, 70.
Maki passed away on Oct. 20, so the date of her receiving the honor was moved back to that day. She is the fourth person to receive the Order of Culture posthumously and the first since fiscal 1986. Manabe will be doubly honored as a Person of Cultural Merit as well, as recipients of the Order of Culture are selected from people who have already been honored for their cultural merit.
There are 21 newly chosen Persons of Cultural Merit, including actor-singer Yuzo Kayama, 84, and animation film director Yoshiyuki Tomino, 79.
According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, Maki is the first recipient of the Order of Culture from the field of ballet. It was also the first time for Persons of Cultural Merit to be chosen from the fields of surface science, genetic and genomics-based medicines, children's literature and Japanese linguistics.
Seven women were honored, a record high.
The award ceremony for the Order of Culture will be held on Nov. 3 at the Imperial Palace. The ceremony for the Persons of Cultural Merit will take place at The Okura Tokyo hotel in Minato Ward, Tokyo, on Nov. 4.
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