A team with connections to the Korean community has won Japan’s famous high school baseball tournament called the “Koshien” for the first time.
On Friday, Kyoto International High School won the prestigious championship by beating Kanto Daiichi High School 2-1 with a tie-breaking run in the 10th inning. This tournament, which happens twice a year in the spring and summer, is one of Japan’s most watched sports events.
The championship is held at the Hanshin Koshien stadium in the western Japanese city of Nishinomiya.
The win is followed closely in Japan and also in South Korea, where baseball is very popular.
The result is expected to highlight the improving relations between these two neighboring countries, but it also brings up the difficult history between them, due to Japan’s harsh colonization of Korea that ended in 1945 after Japan’s defeat in World War II.
A South Korean residents organization commented that the victory “brought together the hearts of all ethnic Korean residents in Japan as one and served as a bridge between South Korea and Japan.”
Mindan, or the Korean Residents Union in Japan, also noted that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol paid attention to the game.
Kyoto International High School was founded in 1947 for Japan’s Korean population, many of whom had been brought to Japan as forced labor during the Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.
