In Ohtani's Dodger blue hometown, a shrine to his baseball talent

A man stands amid hundreds of items -- baseballs, jerseys, posters, a lifesize cutout -- related to Shohie Ohtani.

Oct. 30, 2024 8:05 AM PT

This hair salon in Oshu, Japan, is covered in Dodgers memorabilia, but its owner is adamant that he isn’t really a Dodgers fan.
His loyalties lie with Shohei Ohtani, the baseball star who grew up in the city — whose people are beyond proud, as well as protective, of their native hero.
“Oshu city wants to support him in a pure way,” the superfan collector explained.

OSHU, Japan — Seems Hair and Spa in Oshu, a city in northern Japan, is crammed full with Dodgers memorabilia, but owner Hironobu Kanno is adamant that he isn’t really a Dodgers fan.

It was just past 9 a.m. and Kanno, who is 63 and sports a flowing blond ponytail, had just hurried to his shop to tune into Game 4 of the World Series.

Like the rest of Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani’s hometown, he was hoping, of course, that today was the day that the L.A. franchise would complete a sweep of its historical rivals, the Yankees.

Even so, he is clear that his loyalties lie not with the Dodgers but with Ohtani, the Oshu native who has taken Major League Baseball by storm and rallied the city behind him in a way only a hometown can.

If Ohtani were to magically join the Yankees tomorrow? Would Kanno trade out his Dodgers blue for Yankee stripes?

A man with a long blond ponytail and wearing a Dodgers #17 jersey, stands amid Ohtani memorabilia.

“Of course,” Kanno said, without pause.

In reality, Ohtani is on a 10-year contract with the Dodgers, meaning Kanno’s loyalty is, too.

Per a rule he has instituted for the World Series, every single one of the hairdressers in his shop, including his wife, Satsuki, was tending to customers while wearing a blue Dodgers jersey.

His two customers were also watching the game — whether they like it or not — because Kanno years ago had monitors installed at every seat in order to avoid missing any of Ohtani’s games.

This, one so far, seemed to bode well.

On the main television in the waiting area, Freddie Freeman had hit another first inning homer, making Satsuki and Keiko, one of the stylists, cry out “Freeman!”

The inside of the business is only part salon and mostly museum. It is stacked floor to ceiling with Ohtani-related items that Kanno has spent 11 years and close to $100,000 acquiring, including signed baseballs, dozens of bobbleheads and figurines, jerseys, hats, cleats, batting gloves and a life-size cutout of Ohtani in his Dodgers uniform.

His favorite piece is a hat signed by the entire Ohtani-led Japanese national team that defeated the U.S. squad in last year’s World Baseball Classic. That one is priceless.

“I have a secret connection on the team who helped me get this,” he said. “I can’t really talk about it.”

And in the last year alone, around 1,000 fans — Japanese and foreign — have visited the shop to see all of this for themselves, some with religious reverence and others with fizzy excitement.

One particularly dedicated fan — a young Taiwanese woman — visits every year or so, to ooh and ah at the new additions to the collection.

On her most recent trip she asked Kanno to give her the exact haircut sported by Mamiko Tanaka, Ohtani’s wife.

“Yes, I gave it to her,” Kanno said with a chuckle, gesturing at a picture of Ohtani and Tanaka hanging on the wall.

Kanno started his collection in 2013, with a ball signed by Ohtani he got at a game he attended when the Dodgers superstar — then just 18 years old — was playing for his first professional team: the Japanese league’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.

It had been a dark time for Oshu, where Kanno had been born and raised.

Two years earlier, the Tōhoku region of Japan, where Oshu sits, had been hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake, which killed more than 19,000 people and triggered the tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

For the devastated people of the region, news of a local baseball wunderkind making it in Japan’s big leagues was a balm.

“It felt like Ohtani represented the hope of the region’s people,” Kanno said.

The signed ball had come when Kanno, too, was reaching for a fresh start.

As a young man, Kanno had been a successful hairstylist with a grind-all-day work ethic, winning international competitions that took him on business trips all over the world, followed by a corporate career at a major beauty company.

But sometime in his late 40s, Satsuki had told him: “All you do is work, your family is falling apart. We have money, but we are not happy. You are losing what is important to you and us.”

Shattered by the realization that she was right, Kanno left behind his high-flying life and opened Seems Hair and Spa in 2010.

“I wanted to settle down in my own space in my hometown, where I can chat to people casually and live at a slower pace than before,” he said.

And so the museum was born.

A man stands outside building whose front display shows baseball memorabilia. Its sign reads "Seems hair & spa."

Oshu, a semi-rural city of around 114,000, is not exactly a hub of action. Sometimes the streets in the town known for cattle ranching, apple orchards and ironworking can be so quiet it feels like a ghost town. But Kanno’s collection has made him surprisingly well-connected to the wider world.

Among his contacts is former player and current Dodgers broadcaster José Mota.

“We chat online all the time,” Kanno said, pulling out his phone as proof.

The day before, Kanno had sent Mota a few selfies of him in a Dodger blue crowd at a World Series viewing party the city of Oshu had hosted at a local auditorium.

“That’s beautiful,” Mota had texted back.

It was the third inning of Game 4 and Ohtani, who had partially dislocated his shoulder in Game 2, was standing at the plate.

“His swing is better than yesterday,” Kanno observed.

A pop fly out.

“Ahhhhh,” he groaned. “Maybe his injury is still bothering him.”

Like many in Oshu, Kanno feels protective of Ohtani in a way perhaps only the people of this town can.

Few outsiders may know, for example, that Ohtani comes back to the city every year or so to visit his parents.

Many of the longtime locals are aware when he does, but there is an unwritten code of silence not to reveal this — or his parents’ address — to the media.

“For example, people from Ohsu know what restaurant Ohtani’s family goes to whenever Ohtani is here,” Kanno said.

“But they don’t tell this to the media so that Ohtani will feel safe when he is home.”

It is a rule that is sacrosanct to Kanno.

Sometimes, journalists will ask Kanno if he can tip them off to where Ohtani’s parents live. When that happens, Kanno sends them away.

And although he could find a way to ask Ohtani’s parents to help him get their son’s blessing for his ultimate goal of establishing an official Ohtani museum in the city, he refuses to stoop so low.

“Oshu city wants to support him in a pure way,” he said.

By the eighth inning, a customer had canceled her perm appointment with Kanno, allowing him to watch the game slip away from the Dodgers.

Following a grand slam by the Yankees’ Anthony Volpe in the third, which made Kanno hang his head and groan, New York was piling on the runs to make the score 11-4, seemingly hell-bent on avoiding a sweep.

A man is reflected in a beauty salon mirror.

“I have to give it to the Yankees today,” he said.

Although Kanno was confident that the Dodgers would end up taking the series, he knows that the Pride of Oshu City is destined for more than just this one championship, anyway.

“Ohtani wants to be the greatest player to ever play the game. It is an endless journey for him,” he said.

And more than the accolades, what Kanno respects most about Ohtani is that he seems to have figured out something about life that the stylist himself realized too late.

“Even at his young age, Ohtani knows what is necessary for his life, what his priorities are,” Kanno said.

From the jumble of magazines and Ohtani literature strewn about on the coffee table in the waiting area, Kanno produced a copy of Ohtani’s Mandala Chart, a list of life goals arranged in interconnected squares that the baseball phenom wrote as a sophomore in high school.

Alongside the baseball goals, like increasing the “perfect the forkball” or “strengthen the body core” are the qualities that Kanno has been relearning in Oshu: “sensitivity,” “caring,” becoming someone worthy of trust and love.

Special correspondent Momo Nagayama contributed to this report.