LOS ANGELES -- The poignancy of five Japanese ballplayers returning to their home country as Major League stars resonated with the baseball world last March. One year later, a new documentary goes deeper into the people and places that shaped them.
"Homecoming: The Tokyo Series" premiered on Saturday night at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, exploring baseball's global nature through its cultural idiosyncrasies in Japan. The documentary follows the season-opening 2025 Tokyo Series, which saw Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki's Dodgers face off against Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki's Cubs at Tokyo Dome.
Produced by Supper Club and in coordination with MLB Studios and BD4, "Homecoming: The Tokyo Series" will be released in theaters on Feb. 23 and 24, distributed by Fathom Entertainment.
"Ideally, you come to this film with a curiosity for baseball," director Jason Sterman said in a Q&A following the premiere. "And you leave with a better curiosity for an understanding of where these players are from."
The documentary explores how baseball can be more than a game, but rather a craft and a way of life in Japan. The sport may be referred to as America's pastime, but Japan has made it its own with a deep knowledge of every aspect of the game. That comes across not only in how the players approach the game, but also the fans.
For Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas, who attended the premiere, two moments during the Tokyo Series have particularly stuck with him. One was during the workout day at Tokyo Dome, which drew more than 10,500 spectators. Rojas was the first Dodger to homer during batting practice, and the fans responded with raucous applause.
Days later, in the second and final game of the Tokyo Series, the Cubs had intentionally walked Ohtani, who homered earlier that night, in what could have been his last plate appearance of the series. In the ninth inning, the Dodgers needed just one baserunner in order to bring up Ohtani. Rojas got the job done by drawing a one-out walk, and the crowd roared its approval, knowing it meant that Ohtani should come up one more time.
"That's kind of what I take away from the fans in Japan," Rojas said. "The attention to detail and kind of being present. It was so cool. They didn't really care too much about the outside, they were just watching the game."
At its core, the Tokyo Series was a celebration of Japanese baseball and the strides that Japanese players have made at the highest level of the game. Ohtani, Yamamoto, Sasaki, Imanaga and Suzuki had once been inspired by previous generations of Japanese Major Leaguers -- among them Hideo Nomo, Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki -- and in a full-circle moment, their return to Japan provided a source of inspiration for future generations.
But the series was also a celebration of the culture around baseball in Japan, as the documentary explores. From a grandmother who coaches a youth team alongside her son, to glove and bat manufacturers who care about creating equipment that endures, the film puts a spotlight on people who honor the game -- and shows how the game can honor them right back.
Above all, the documentary shows that while Japan imparts its own influence on baseball, the game has a universal quality.
Baseball can transcend age, language, nationality and other demographics. Born-and-raised Los Angeles fans could find common ground with the hair stylist from Ohtani's hometown of Oshu City, pictured in the documentary, who became a superfan of the two-way star. Youth players leaving the yard may experience the same euphoria as a big leaguer going deep in a critical spot.
But the beautiful thing about the Tokyo Series was that young ballplayers in Japan were able to see themselves in the Major Leaguers who came to their country. And for English-speaking audiences, baseball became a common language to garner a deeper understanding of some of the biggest stars in the game.
"It's approaching the game much more so as a way of approaching life," Sterman said. "With the idea that obviously this film hopefully created a little bit of a window, so other people can experience that as well."