The Koshien Dream:

Part 2...

Sunday, August 16

I finished my eki-ben lunch, a box of maki-sushi and onigirri, a dish slowly becoming one of my favorite fast Japanese foods. By the annoying amusement park-esque welcome music, I knew I was back on the Shiokaze limited express to Matsuyama. Not that the shinkansen didn't have auditory annoyances. Its just that I seemed to have disregarded them in favor of focusing on the bullet train's amazing futurisms. Even the shape of the train looked like a spaceship: a horizontal cone pierced artistically at the tip. And the speed...well shinkansen is synonomous with speed in Japan. At times, it didn't even feel like we were moving. On my jam-packed outbound trip from Okayama to Osaka, I stood the entire time, balancing both myself and my two bags without one jolt or rattle. Whether or not the shinkansen is symbolic of modern Japan or not, it is an experience in the way that a cruise ship is a vacation; well worth the money. And of course, the destination was incredible as well. I would never have ventured all the way to Osaka without the prospect of Koshien. Koshien was the dream that became reality and did not dissapoint. My expectations had been high, but they were met and then some. To me, diving headfirst in Japanese culture had to be a splash into sport. If it were not, I knew my attention would wane and I would pine for home. But sport seemed to rejuvenate, and combined with youth...nothing rejuvenates more than youth. Koshien woke me up to Japan. For decades Koshien has been the site of The Japanese high school baseball tournament in August, usually held around the same time as Obon, the morbid Japanese Festival of the Dead. Perhaps for this reason, Koshien is leisure in Japan, concomitantly scheduled with a time where all Japanese travel home to spend time with family and friends. In a culture as dedicated to work as any nation world, this need not be understated. But then again, most of the players at Koshien - junior and senior level high-school boys - take baseball very seriously. The vast majority will slide headfirst into every base, have dirty uniforms before the game even begins, and only crack a smile if they hit one over the fence. As Robert Whiting argued in his seminal work on baseball in Japan, You've Gotta Have Wa, the Japanese don't play baseball, they work it. To be sure, many of the players at Koshien, if they make it big in baseball, will likely become salaryman in corporate Japan and further their extreme work ethic. Yet baseball is still fun, if more structured and disciplined than its American counterpart. It is, after all, a game. I went to Koshien for fun...but also to experience the fervor of perhaps the most exciting team sporting event in Japan. Koshien is special because, like the Little Leagzue World Series in Pennsylvania, it headlines local teams from all over Japan, all vying for the glory that is Koshien victory. Victors will forever be famed in their hometowns, whether they go on to become butchers or pitchers professionally. Even the losers go home happy - if not because they passed the regional tests and were skillful (or lucky) enough to make it to Koshien in the first place. With a plastic bag full of dirt they will depart from this hallowed ground, one final reminder of the magic of their youth. And its probably better that way. Koshien is single elimination; every goes home a loser but one team. Taikyo, from Tokyo, seemed to be strong enough to be that one team. Hitting with the power of sluggers years their senior, they belted three home runs in the first four innings - in a major league sized ballpark - to take the lead over the Fukui city team 11-3. They never looked back. Alisha and I - she had ventured from Ibaraki to scout the next Ichiro - were interviewed not once but twice by Japanese sports reporters, perhaps hoping to break a story on gaijin baseball fanatics. It seemed we were the only foreigners in the whole stadium, and certainly the only fans without a team to root for. The Ehime-ken team, Kawanoe, was tough and featured two good pitchers, but they didn't play their quarterfinal game until Sunday. As for Alisha, Ibaraki had advanced on Friday against a team from Aomori. But it didn't seem to matter. We were embraced by the fanatical Fukui oendan - cheering section replete with dancers, pom-pom girls and riotous flag wavers - and given megaphones with which to scream our lungs out. And scream we did. The Japanese fans are so dedicated (it is said that they practice harder than the players do) that some pass out due to heat exhaustion. We saw two such cases firsthand. If I did have a team I supported, it would be the Shikoku teams, but though four teams from four prefectures still remained in the final sixteen teams (a gross overrepresentation of both my islands miniscule population and baseball skill), I was only able to watch a few innings of Jinsei's (Kagawa-ken) victory against Sakuchosei. By dusk I undertsood that it wasn't the teams that mattered, but the spirit and intensity of the competition. Koshien is a special place, I thought to myself as I munched on yaki soba and fried chicken. I thought about an expression my football coaches used to use in high school. "Leave it all on the field, gentlemen. Don't save a thing for the party afterwards." Perhaps not surprisingly, both the players and the fans did just that, though it didn't seem like they had to be told to. It was the kind of effort that one rarely finds anywhere - on the field, in the classroom, in the boardroom. In fact I couldn't help but regret that I rarely gave that kind of effort myself on the field, though it had been preached to me many times. For some reason, though, I was not feeling sorry for myself. Their effort rejuvenated and inspired my spirit and work ethic. Koshien seemed to transcend the monotonous banality of daily life; it awoke the soul and galvanized the heart. It made me think that baseball was, as the Japanese had proved right before my eyes, much more than just a game.