180902-0018-KS - Quaker Baseball Team

The 1907 (Meiji 40) Quaker Baseball Team of the University of Pennsylvania featuring Japanese baseball player Shunzo Takaki (高木舜三, 1883-1919) in the back row, second from right. He is is believed to be the first person of Japanese ancestry to play baseball for a mainland U.S. college.

The son of Japanese naval physician Baron Kanehiro Takaki (高木 兼寛, 1849-1920), 21-year old Shunzo arrived in the U.S. in 1904 (Meiji 37) to attend the World’s Fair in St. Louis and to represent his home country in an exhibition tennis tournament.