One of my greatest accomplishments as a professor: Turning a French student into a Hanshin fan!

Continuing the theme of having great pride in my students... In my Globalization class we spend some time talking about global sports and I use baseball as an example with the Hanshin Tigers as a case study. This is often times difficult for my European students and others from countries where baseball is not so popular or even non-existent. After informing me of his confusion and lack of knowledge about baseball, Gwendal left his comfort zone for some fieldwork. His own words:

"As you -insisted- suggested in class, I went to Koshien to watch the Tigers this evening and THEY WON! I indeed liked the atmosphere here and shared this moment with the people around my seat that were surprisingly friendly toward me. Some young Japanese boys even lend me a pair of the things to make some noise and asked me after the match to take a picture together."

Excellent!

Hanshin progress report as of 5/29/23: First place in the Central League (6 games ahead of second place DeNA) and riding an 8-game winning streak!

"Filmmaker excited about chance to present Koshien to U.S. audience"

Photo and text from The Japan Times, June 29,2020.

Freshmen joining the Yokohama Hayato baseball team have to dedicate themselves to all aspects of the team philosophy. Right down to the proper way to say good morning.

“Your articulation is terrible,” a senior member tells a first-year player whose greeting wasn’t up to form. “Make sure to emphasize each syllable.”

This probably isn’t the type of scene you’d expect to see in a baseball documentary. Then again, “KOSHIEN: Japan’s Field of Dreams,” a film directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki, isn’t exactly a typical sports movie.

Rather than the usual story about Koshien, Japan’s famed summer high school baseball tournament, Yamazaki wanted to pull back the curtain and give people outside Japan a better understanding of both Koshien and Japanese culture.

“Hopefully, they get to see a whole different version of the sport,” Yamazaki told The Japan Times. “A world of baseball that they didn’t know before. They can have their opinions after that, but I think it’s just a chance to better understand what it means to us. I think we also tried to make this film as kind of a microcosm of Japanese society at large.

“So even if you don’t care about baseball, if you have an interest in Japan, we hope you see how Japan used to be through how high school baseball has been and how society and high school baseball, looking ahead to change and adapt and hopefully keep progressing, mirror each other.”

The film spends most of its time with Kanagawa Prefecture’s Yokohama Hayato, which is managed by Tetsuya Mizutani and has three former players currently on NPB rosters, including Orix Buffaloes outfielder Yuma Mune.

Given access to Mizutani and his players, the film follows their quest to try to qualify for the 2018 tournament.

“I don’t think he (Mizutani) quite knew what he was getting into, but just allowed us to shoot freely as much as possible,” Yamazaki said. “That’s the reason we could make a film that I think feels really intimate as though we were right there the whole time, which we were.”

Also featured is Iwate Prefecture’s Hanamaki Higashi High School, managed by Hiroshi Sasaki, one of Mizutani’s proteges. Hanamaki Higashi famously produced major leaguers Shohei Ohtani and Yusei Kikuchi, who both appear in the film.

The summer tournament at Koshien is a treasured three-week spectacle of sports, culture and tradition set to the tune of brass bands and the sharp ping of baseballs meeting aluminum.

Fans regularly fill Koshien Stadium — total attendance was around 841,000 in 2019 — and each game is also televised nationally.

The players slide around the grassless infield while chasing grounders and make head-first dives into first base. Fans marvel at the “fighting spirit” on display and sometimes celebrate a valiant defeat with as much fervor as a victory.

“When I think about why Japanese people are drawn to the Koshien tournament, I feel they sense the players’ mind and spirit, which are things that Japanese people are very drawn to,” Japanese baseball legend Hideki Matsui said in comments released by the filmmakers.

Almost 4,000 schools compete in prefectural tournaments around Japan in hopes of earning one of the 49 coveted berths.

“Like Ohtani said, just making it there is the hardest part,” Yamazaki said.

The idea behind the film came in 2017, after Yamazaki, who grew up in Hyogo Prefecture and less than 20 minutes from Koshien Stadium, returned to Japan after nine years abroad.

Already well into her career, she found herself wanting to make a film about Japan. While readjusting to her home country, and appreciating things she’d once taken for granted, the 99th edition of the summer tournament began.

“I was really appreciating those Japanese traits and I realized, seeing the helmets lined up on the field and how the kids kind of embody very Japanese character traits, that maybe if I focused on high school baseball there was something I could capture about Japan,” she said.

“Why we’re the way we are, how we’re changing, what our struggles are, what our triumphs are, things like that. Then when I realized it was going to be the 100th tournament that following summer, I was like wow, let’s go for this.”

While variations of the film have been shown before, on NHK and also at DOC NYC, a major documentary film festival in New York, the filmmakers are excited to present it on ESPN. It will represent the first time for the feature film to be shown to a large audience outside of Japan.

That it will happen during a year when both the spring and summer tournaments were canceled because of COVID-19 isn’t lost on Yamazaki.

“So many unfortunate things are happening due to the pandemic,” she said. “But somehow I’d like to think there’s some meaning in the fact that this is the moment that Koshien reaches large audiences outside of Japan.”

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2020/06/29/baseball/filmmaker-excited-chance-present-koshien-u-s-audience/

See the trailer:



See also: DOC NYC 2019 Women Directors: Meet Ema Ryan Yamazaki – “Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams”
URL: https://womenandhollywood.com/doc-nyc-2019-women-directors-meet-ema-ryan-yamazaki-koshien-japans-field-of-dreams/

NOTE: Remember there is already a great film about high school baseball in Japan: Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball (Eng 2006). I am curious to see how the new film is different from this one.

Here's the trailer:

The First Non-Hanshin Tigers Baseball Game I Have Been to in Japan (Orix Buffaloes vs. Lotte Marines, 23 May 2015)

I've been in Japan a long time and I have seen a lot of baseball games here. But they have all been Hanshin Tigers games, many of them well documented in VAOJ. On Saturday a friend had some free tickets to the Orix Buffaloes (the other Osaka team in the Pacific League) game against the Chiba Lotte Marines. This game pitted the two worst teams in the Pacific League (Lotte in 5th place, Orix in last place). I was curious as to how this game would compare with a Tigers game at Koshien Stadium. The Buffaloes' home stadium is the Kyocera Dome Osaka. Many die-hard fans from both teams were lined up to enter the dome. The tickets we had allowed us to sit either on the first base side or the third base side. The seats were not assigned - it was first come first sit. We decided on the first base side.

There were many pre-game activities including a hula performance (as if baseball isn't globalized enough...).

And then of course there was a performance by the Bs Girls - a group that is a cross between cheerleaders and an idol group. Japanese baseball introduced female cheer girls to their teams a couple of years ago.

There was even a performance of the Japanese national anthem (everyone was asked to stand) by a children's choir.

The game was significant in that it was the first start of Orix's ace pitcher, Chihiro Kaneko, winner of last season's Sawamura Award. He had been out of action since a shoulder surgery in November. He seemed rusty to say the least, giving up 6 runs on 7 hits, including a gram slam to Lotte's Ikuhiro Kiyota. Kaneko was pulled after the third inning.

The Buffaloes cheering section is much smaller than the Tigers' at Koshien.

There were many Lotte fans in their assigned left field section. They seemed much more organized and genki compared to their Buffaloes counterparts. At times the Lotte fans would jump up and down in unison while cheering.

The Buffaloes, as well as most other teams, have adopted the release of balloons before their lucky 7th inning originated by Hanshin.

Buffaloes fans have their own unique rituals as well, waving small flags for one player and swinging towels for others.

One of three mascots...

The controlled atmosphere of the dome adds to the lonely feeling of the stadium (in my opinion...).

In the end the Buffaloes lost 6 to 5. Lotte raised itself to 4th place in the standings.

For details of the game, see "Kiyota, Marines spoil Kaneko’s long-awaited return to mound" in the Japan Times, 5/24/15:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2015/05/23/baseball/japanese-baseball/kiyota-marines-spoil-kanekos-long-awaited-return-to-mound/

It was a fun game although not a very well played one by either team. Perhaps the Buffaloes should spend more time and resources on their game rather than the pre-game stuff...

甲子園の写真

One of my favorite places in the whole world is Koshien Stadium, home of the Hanshin Tigers. I love baseball and Hanshin is my favorite team. But it is challenging for me at Koshien to balance my role as a fan and as a visual anthropologist. I am literally juggling cheering paraphernalia, chu-hai, katsu curry and camera while sitting in a narrow seat (or suddenly standing after a good play) in a very crowded stadium. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Here are some shots from my recent pilgrimage when Hanshin took on the Yokohama Baystars.











































































And by the way, Hanshin won! And it was a special game because it was the first win for the rookie player Fujinami who was drafted right out of high school in the first round. Here's hoping he becomes a Hanshin star...

See details of the game (4/14/13): http://japanesebaseball.com/blogs/thread.jsp?blogid=1137&thread=68313

See previous VAOJ posts and photos essays about Hanshin: click here.