Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams is about something bigger than baseball

The new film Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams explores the Koshien, a century-old high school baseball tournament and crucible of culture and tradition.

There is a moment in Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, the new documentary from filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki (now available to stream through virtual cinemas) that sent me down a rabbit hole looking into a dude I hadn’t thought about since he went 3-3 in 2014 for my belovedly aggravating New York Mets. In 1998, Daisuke Matsuzaka — Dice-K when he was nasty — became a baseball god in his native Japan when he took the sacred mound at Koshien, the legendary stadium near Kobe, and threw 250 pitches in a complete 17-inning game victory. (For good measure, the next day he played outfield and got a two-inning save and the day after that he tossed a no-hitter to win the championship).

He was still in high school.

Named after the stadium in which it’s played (professional home of the Hanshin Tigers), Koshien is the insanely-intense single-elimination baseball tournament that begins with 4,000 eligible high school teams in spring, whittles it down to 49, sends those teams to a two-week hardball tatakau to crown a king, and mints legends like “Kaibutsu,” the Japanese nickname given to Matsuzaka. (In English, “The Monster.”) Koshien is a beloved institution that rivets the nation of 127-million every August, a sporting event so massively central to the country’s identity that it doesn’t have an American counterpart.

“It’s the Super Bowl and March Madness combined,” says Yamazaki, who lives in Tokyo but called in from Nagano. “There are high schools that regularly make it to Koshien, but because it’s a knockout tourney, every team believes they have a chance. People really relate to those teams that make it for the first time and the underdogs become national heroes.”

The Koshien has the devoted regional fandom of high school football in Texas or hockey in Minnesota, but it plays into a countrywide sense of self that’s more than wins-and-losses, Xs-and-Os, and post-game beers. Commenting on the film, former Yankee masher/porn aficionado Hideki Matsui summed up how much national weight the players carry on their bats, saying in a decidedly Nipponese patois:

"When I think about why Japanese people are drawn to the Koshien tournament, I feel that they sense the players’ mind and spirit, which are things that Japanese people are very drawn to. The dream of playing in Koshien from childhood. The emotions and expectations of your family and school on your shoulders. The reality that if you lose, it’s over. The likelihood that most of the seniors would walk away from baseball after their last summer tournament. It’s the combination of all these factors that lead to the sincerity and passion on the field, which moves the hearts of those who watch them play."

Being part of something bigger than baseball, and their adolescent selves, is why players train year-round in all kinds of weather, shave their heads and run laps in complete unison Marine Corps style, wake early to clean toilets and pick up what little trash is laying around, and why nobody thought twice two decades ago about a teenage Kaibutsu whipping the egg until his arm turned into Kakitamajiru. There is a bit of a changing of the national guard, however, which is the subtle bit of brilliance that permeates Yamazaki’s film.

In 2018, for the 100th anniversary of Koshien, she zeroed in on two teams with varying ideas about how tough to be on their squads. The star of the film is Tetsuya Mizutani, longtime coach of Yokohama Hayato, who’s only been to the Oki Dansu once, in 2009, and it took him 18 years to get there. A man who declares “I want to remain a stubborn man of the 20th-century,” is the kind of man who, to eliminate even the smallest whiff of favoritism, won’t let his son Kosho play for Hayato. The high school diamond is where Dad spends most of his life, so he’s never seen his own play.

Throughout Koshien, Mizutani chews the ass of a senior third-baseman — one teetering on the edge of making the team again — for being a few kilograms under his expected weight. Coach basically tells him he won’t be strong enough to crush dingers. It’s asinine to think extra helpings of rice correlates to hitting the ball on the screws, but questioning authority? No son, that’s the American way. Kid could be the next coming of Sadaharu Oh (spoiler, he’s not) but it’s eat-up and shut-up time.

“It’s an example of a general rule applied to the entire team, all players have to do X. You’ll notice in the film that almost all the players have the same body type, which you would never have in the U.S.,” says Yamazaki, who attended NYU and pre-pandemic split time between Gotham and Tokyo. “It’s also a bit of a mind game, but it’s all in service of every kid being similar.  For better or worse.”

The Hayato story runs parallel with that of Hanamaki Higashi, a Koshiean juggernaut gunning for their tenth trip coached by Hiroshi Sasaki. His baseball bonafides include setting Shohei Ohtani on the path to becoming the sole major leaguer to ever accrue 15 home runs and 50 pitching strikeouts in a season.

The wrinkle in Koshien is that Mizutani mentored Sasaki, pines for his track record, but yet sent Kosho three hours north from Kanagawa to Iwate to play for him. Sasaki is a less stubborn man of the 21st-century who at least ponders the idea that young arms aren’t actually made of rubber and maybe the martial arts haircuts should be left in the past. There’s a bit in Koshien where Sasaki stands in his Zen garden and uses a small pot and a bonsai tree to more or less make the case for pitch counts. He’s nowhere near as harsh as Mizutani, but since his methods are proving more effective, the old man does seem to have fleeting moments of regret…Although Mizutani also speaks fondly of the ancient tradition of seppuku and its modern equal, a perfectly-placed sacrifice bunt. Yenball this is not.

“It’s an interesting time for Koshien because what has been whispered in the past is now asked out loud, ‘Do we need to put these kids through 100-degree days, break them all down, just for a baseball tournament?” says Yamazaki. “But then in 2019, attendance was 841,000, its highest ever, and every game was on national TV. It’s a generational contradiction that mirrors where Japan as a country is at right now.”

Thanks to Covid, there was no true Koshien tournament in 2020. Every senior who missed out did get a scoop of stadium dirt, which is usually dug up by hand, a tradition definitely worth saving. A mini-tournament was held, but like everything in this godforsaken year, it wasn’t the same. This year fans will have to make do with Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams and wonder what the future of the tournament will bring. For today though, thanks to the Japanese ethos of following orders, respecting elders, and not wanting to bring shame upon the country, Yamazaki is screening the documentary throughout her native country, in theaters filled with people who were already adhering to the modern sacrifice-for-the-greater-good ritual of wearing masks.