PORTLAND – Junichi Tazawa was determined to start his professional baseball career in America, even though he knew doing so would shake his country and its inexorable baseball establishment.

In Japan, amateur baseball players are expected to aspire to play Nippon Professional Baseball. If they feel the need to prove themselves in the United States, the powers that be in Japanese baseball will begrudgingly agree, but only after the player either has spent nine years plying their trade at home or seeks permission to negotiate with Major League Baseball teams through the posting system, a la Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Tazawa announced last September that he wanted to jump from Japan’s amateur Industrial League to MLB without paying his NPB dues. He asked NPB teams not to select him in their October draft. When they complied, it set off not a bidding war, but a recruiting war that eventually led the Yokohama native to make his American debut in Portland last Thursday.

The 22-year-old right-hander wasn’t out to make a quick buck. Other teams reportedly offered him more money, but Tazawa signed with the Boston Red Sox, in large part because he thought they would know what to do with him once they got him.

“The Red Sox have a very good player development plan, and many Japanese staff members to help me,” Tazawa said recently through an interpreter. “The scouting staff explained the player development plan very well.”

Since Boston signed Tazawa last Dec. 11 to a three-year major league contract (reportedly for $3 million), the Red Sox plan for Tazawa would appear to be to develop rapidly, even though his professional pitching resume is blank.

The Red Sox got an idea of what they can expect from Tazawa during his spring training stint with the big league club. They had to like what they saw. He allowed just one run and five hits and fanned 10 in nine innings. Tazawa said he liked what he saw.

“When I was in big league camp, it felt like I was part of the Red Sox,” he said. “I could see many big names there, so I could see it, I could feel it, and I learned a lot.”

Tazawa could bond with Hideki Okajima and Takashi Saito in Red Sox camp (Matsuzaka was away pitching in the WBC). Since he’s joined the Sea Dogs, however, he’s had only assistant trainer Kiyoshi Otani, who also serves as his interpreter, to converse with in Japanese. Yet Tazawa, who is taking English classes, feels he is blending in well.

“Everyone is so friendly and helping me, so right now, I’m very comfortable,” he said.

While the Sea Dogs clubhouse hosts many nationalities, the players and coaches are cognizant of the fact that Tazawa faces different challenges than even his Latin American counterparts in adjusting to a new country and culture.

“I can only imagine how difficult it is for him,” infielder Iggy Suarez said. “You want to make him comfortable, so we’re always joking around with him and always including him in stuff. That language barrier itself is difficult, but he doesn’t seem secluded, and we don’t want him to be that way.”

“It’s going to be an adjustment for all of us because I’ve never had a player like that that you really can’t just flat-out communicate with,” manager Arnie Beyeler said. “The Latin kids, we all speak a little Spanglish and I’ve been over to the Dominican a few times, but I’ve never been to Japan.

“But when we get out on the field, it’s baseball,” Beyeler said.

Indeed, when Tazawa started for Portland on Opening Day, the universal language of baseball seemed to break down a lot of barriers.

“The communication in the dugout between the catcher, (Mark) Wagner and him was pretty seamless,” Sea Dogs pitching coach Mike Cather said. “I felt really comfortable with that going down between innings and talking to him, whether it be (about) pitch selection or holding runners or what he’s seeing out there. He’s very easy to talk to, very approachable, very coachable.”

Tazawa threw five innings of four-hit, one-run ball while taking a 3-0 loss in his Sea Dogs debut. He impressed with his 93 MPH fastball, curve and forkball, as well as his poise and ability to adjust in his seven strike out, one walk, 66-pitch outing.

It was solid proof that Tazawa isn’t completely raw, and that the 14-3 record, 11 saves and 1.99 ERA he’d posted during the four years he pitched for the Nippon Oil ENEOS wasn’t the result of a power arm dominating inferior competition.

“He looks like he’s been coached well for a long time,” Cather said.

The Sea Dogs still have to teach him some basics of American baseball, Cather pointed out, such as how to pitch in a five-man rotation. Games are more spaced out in Japan baseball, making an every-fifth-day routine unnecessary.

“We have to see how he bounces back between starts,” he said. “Once we get that underway, we’ll take a look to see where we’re at. Maybe that’s three or four starts down the road.”

If Tazawa is as good in those next three or four starts as he was in his first, the No. 7 ranked prospect in the Red Sox organization could follow in the footsteps of other young hurlers, such as Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz and Justin Masterson, who went from Sea being Dogs in the spring to Red Sox in the summer.