Time Machine: Mental health challenges have impacted MLB, NPB for decades

This story originally appeared in the Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji in 2010.

TOKYO — The recent apparent suicide death of promising young Orix outfielder Hiroyuki Oze, whose lifeless body was found on the ground after falling from the Buffaloes’ hotel in Okinawa, brings to mind other such suicides in the history of the NPB.

One that I immediately recall is the suicide of onetime Orix BlueWave scout Kazutoshi Miwata, the man who originally scouted Ichiro Suzuki out of high school and urged the BlueWave to sign him against the advice of others. In 1999, he was troubled by his inability to sign top draft pick Nagisa Arakaki. He was working long hours on his task, under intense pressure from the team and suffering symptoms of extreme stress, loss of appetite, sleep disorders and memory loss. On a trip to Okinawa, where his request for Arakaki’s signature on a contract was rebuffed by Arakaki’s parents, he climbed to the top of the 11^th floor of an office building in Naha, and jumped off.