A high school baseball championship and Japan-South Korea relations

One of Japan's summer traditions is the National High School Baseball Championship tournament held every year at Koshien Stadium.

Readers who do not normally follow Japan-Korea relations may not be aware of it, but something unusual happened this year. At this historic tournament celebrating its centennial, Kyoto International High School, formerly a South Korean-associated school, won the tournament on Aug. 23. After the game, the school’s anthem, sung in Korean, echoed through the stadium.

The reactions to Kyoto International High School's accomplishment, both in Japan and South Korea, were intriguing. In South Korea, President Yoon Suk-yeol posted a Facebook message congratulating the winners, saying that the victory “gave pride and courage to our compatriots in Japan.” Yonhap News reported that “a national school made miraculous history.” After the match, the South Korean Foreign Ministry posted a text message from Minister Cho Tae-yeol congratulating the school on its victory, saying it was a “bridge of friendship between the two countries.”

The response in Japan was quite different. To my knowledge, neither Prime Minister Fumio Kishida nor Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi made any official comments. Major Japanese newspapers and TV stations reported on Kyoto International High School's win without fanfare. Additionally, there were no critical articles about the playing of the Korean school's official song.

In South Korea, reports said Koreans were surprised by the lack of reaction from Japanese baseball fans regarding the playing of the Korean school's anthem. Some Korean intellectuals noted that many people in Japan did not complain about the choice of song and suggested that the Japanese people seemed indifferent.

Kyoto International High School was founded in 1947 as Kyoto Korean Junior High School and was later approved by the governor of Kyoto. In 2003, the South Korean-linked school was fully recognized by the Japanese government under the nation's School Education Law. The following year, it changed its name to Kyoto International High School, which is its current name.

Moreover, Kyoto International High School is one of the top high school baseball teams in Japan. In 2021, the team recorded its first win in the Spring Koshien tournament, one of Japan’s two major high school baseball tournaments held annually at the iconic Koshien ballpark. The team also competed in the Summer Koshien tournament that same year, reaching the final four. This year, Kyoto International High School participated in both the spring and summer events, winning the latter.

In other words, the South Korean school's anthem has been played at Koshien numerous times in the past and is now quite familiar to Japanese high school baseball fans.

As an international school approved by the education ministry, it doesn’t matter whether the school song is in English or Korean. The Japanese naturally honor and respect the athletes of any participating high school, regardless of its background, as long as the athletes have worked hard and won the championship.

Of course, this does not mean there was no criticism or negative comments at all. After Kyoto International High School won the championship, the Kyoto Prefectural Government reportedly asked the Kyoto District Legal Affairs Bureau and social media companies to remove four discriminatory posts targeting the school. From my perspective, only four such posts were identified. The criticism was not directed at the school's anthem itself, but rather at NHK, which translated and broadcast the anthem.

Kyoto International High School's school song uses the term "East Sea" to refer to the body of water that Japan officially calls the Sea of Japan. North and South Korea, for their part, officially call it the East Sea. To avoid potential political controversy, NHK translated "East Sea" as "Sea in the East" in the Japanese subtitles during the broadcast. This translation received criticism from both conservative Japanese media, which preferred Sea of Japan, and South Koreans, who favored East Sea. I believe that "Sea in the East" is a politically neutral translation.

The reality is that when high school baseball becomes a topic of political debate, some form of controversy is almost inevitable. However, understanding the situation with the Kyoto International High School baseball team shows that politicizing the sport is largely pointless. Of the members of the winning team, only one is a South Korean national, meaning the rest are either Japanese or were born and raised in Japan.

What is more, one of the players' post-game comments is truly interesting. According to media reports, he said, “I can sing at least, but I don't understand the meaning at all. I lived in Japan all my life, so I don't know any Korean. People might think that because I go to this kind of school, I must be interested in it, but to be honest, I don't have any special interest in Korea. We are baseball players who came here to play baseball. ...” Yes, they are baseball players, indeed.

I asked young South Koreans I met recently about this. Here is the gist of their responses: It all depends on the generation. Unlike their parents' and grandparents' generations, young Koreans have more self-confidence and feel more equal to Japan. While some love Japan and others harbor anti-Japanese sentiments, today's Korean youth view Japan more dispassionately.

When I first visited South Korea with my father in the early 1970s, the country was under martial law and all the conversations with his Korean friends were in Japanese. At the time, I was convinced that the day would come when I would only speak English with my Korean friends. Half a century has passed and my premonition of that time is becoming a reality.

At the same time, as symbolized by Kyoto International High School's victory, I am convinced that Japan-South Korea relations will eventually enter a new era as a result of generational change. Am I too optimistic? What do readers from third countries, other than Japan and South Korea, think?