Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Resident Korean Baseball Players 1981

     May I take it that the readers are reasonably familiar with the rules of baseball.  A game is participated in by two teams, each consisting of 9 players-a pitcher, a catcher, four infielders and three outfielders.  It is played for nine innings.

     From almost the time immemorial there has been an annual national tournament in baseball of high schools.  Hundreds of them take part.  In 1981 the final game, to decide what team comes to the top of the whole high school baseball world in the country, was fought between Hotoku Gakuen High from Hyogo Prefecture and Kyoto Commerce High.  The daily Asahi has started writing a column for 20 consecutive days on this game for entertainment starting today, 21 February.  The following is based on the first installment which appeared today.

     What I would like to tell here, however, is not the game itself(Hotoku beat Kyoto by 2-0).  I was rather keenly interested to know from the above that, the two teams put together, as many as seven of the players were of Korean origin(not seven out of eighteen but of fifty or so including the substitute players). Moreover, two of them from Kyoto were there by their real, namely the Korean, names.  This was unheard-of, when many of the resident Koreans were living under adopted Japanese names, although some of those names would suggest the national origin of their users.  Those two with the real Korean names were particularly popular with the Korean audience, receiving phone calls as well as letters from those unknown to them.

     Thirty-six years on, and I am hereby expressing my respect to the courage that the above seven, especially the two, faced the prejudice by the Japanese from which we are yet to be free.     

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