CHINO, Japan, Aug. 23, 2024—Kyoto Kokusai (International) High School Aug. 23, 2024 beat the Kanto Daiichi High School of Tokyo 2-1 in the 10th inning tie breaker to become the first Korean, and the first international school to win the annual summer National High School Tournament in its 109-year history. Teams that won the much-coveted stardom traditionally becomes nationally famous not only for ball games but also other sports as well as academic activities.
Nearly 4,000 high school ball teams compete in 49 prefectural tournaments to send the winning teams to Koshien Stadium near the second largest city of Osaka every spring and summer. It’s undeniably the most prestigious baseball event for high school ball players, and in fact, many are joining pro ball teams. The most famous player in recent years is Shohei Ohtani, a member of the ball team and graduate of Hanamaki Higashi High School. His team failed to win a prefectural tournament, but he had impressed upon pro ball recruiters, including American teams.
In a flash report, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper of South Korea reported Kyoto Kokusai’s victory as ‘standing at the pinnacle in the (Japan high school ball tournament) dream stage.’ The team’s victory drew roaring celebration calls in and outside the stadium to the tune of the Hangul Korean language school anthem – which also was the first time in the tournament’s 109-year history that a foreign school anthem was played and sung by the winning team.
Kyoto Kokusai was founded in 1947 as a private Korean junior high school financed by Korean residents in Japan. It was recognized as a school by the Kyoto governor in 1958. As the number of Korean students began shrinking in the 1990s, the school swung open its doors to Japanese students in 2004 – wooing them as a baseball school and for trilingual education with Korean, Japanese and English. The school teaches about 140 students, of which Japanese students account for 100 and Korean-Japanese 40. Of the Japanese students, as many as 40 belong to the baseball team. In a 2021 tally, the school had 136 students, of which females were 69 and males 67, and of the males, 59 were ball team members.
How will the ball team victory make changes is at the center of attention in Japan and Korea. Japanese and Korean media generally are applauding the team’s victory as having positive influence over the bilateral relationship. It was top news stories of all major Japanese and Korean newspapers with not a single negative word or sentences seen in the reports. Korean President Yyoon Suk Yeol wrote in his social network site ‘Congratulations.’
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