August 24, 2017

Yesterday afternoon, on August 23, the baseball team from Hanasaki Tokuharu High School in Saitama Prefecture (an administrative unit near Tokyo) captured Japan’s ultimate amateur prize: the summer Kōshien championship. The summer Kōshien, formally known as the National High School Baseball Championship, is one of Japan’s biggest sporting events. The two-week tournament is played every August near the port city of Kobe in Hyōgo Prefecture at Hanshin Kōshien Stadium—a ballpark built specifically for the tournament. The boys from Hanasaki Tokuharu downed Hiroshima Koryo High School 14-4 to win the school’s first national title.

Hanshin Kōshien Stadium, seen here during the 2009 summer Kōshien final, has hosted the national high school baseball tournament since 1924.
Credit: 百楽兎 (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Japan’s first national high school baseball tournament took place in 1915. The tournament quickly grew in size and popularity, and a large, centrally located ballpark was built in the Kōshien neighborhood of Nishinomiya, near Kobe, to host it. Kōshien Stadium opened for the 1924 tournament, and with seating for some 50,000 fans, it was the largest sports park in Asia at the time. A second, much smaller invitational high school baseball tournament has been played in March at Kōshien since 1925. The two tournaments are distinguished by their seasons—the spring Kōshien and summer Kōshien. The summer tournament, which begins with nearly 4,000 teams, is a much larger event. Only 36 teams participate in the spring Kōshien. This year marks the 99^th summer Kōshien—a few years were missed during World War II (1939-1945). Before the war, teams from Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan also participated in the tournament.

Ballplayers compete during the 2011 National High School Baseball Championship at Hanshin Kōshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Japan. Credit: Kentaro Iemoto (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Every year beginning in June, high school baseball teams throughout Japan begin the road to Kōshien with tournaments to decide the prefecture champions. By the beginning of August, the single-elimination tourney has pared the teams down to 49—one from each prefecture except Hokkaido and Tokyo, which each get two teams. On August 8, the intense summer Kōshien began sending losing teams home. Millions of people follow the tournament on television each year, and the ballpark is consistently filled during the busy two-week schedule. Without losing a game, Koryo and Hanasaki Tokuharu reached the championship final, always a highly anticipated and tension-filled game. The boys from Hanasaki Tokuharu dominated the final, giving Saitama Prefecture its first Kōshien champions. For Koryo, the loss in the final left a familiar sour taste. The Hiroshima school has now reached the final four times but never won. Koryo’s previous final losses came in 2007, 1967, and 1927—the run of unlucky sevens has continued.

Major League Baseball star Ichiro Suzuki, seen here with the Miami Marlins in 2016, led his high school team from Nagoya to the summer Kōshien in 1991. Credit: © Michael Reaves, The Denver Post/Getty Images

Hanshin Kōshien Stadium has been home to the Hanshin Tigers (formerly the Osaka Tigers) professional baseball club since 1936. The name Hanshin comes from the Hanshin Electric Railway Company, which owns the stadium and the team. Each August, the Tigers—a top-flight pro club—must go on the road for two weeks to accommodate the summer Kōshien.