LETTER FROM TOKYO
No more buzz cuts! In a bid to revive its popularity, Japan's very conservative high school baseball system resolved to let go of this tradition of forcing its athletes to have a certain hairstyle. On Wednesday, August 23, the team from Keio High School in Yokohama (south of Tokyo) beat Ikuei High School in Sendai (north-east Japan) 8-2 in the final of the Koshien, the national summer championship. In addition to their different game plans, you could tell the two teams apart by their contrasting regulations concerning hairstyles: The former had given its players the freedom to let their hair grow, while the latter had maintained the tradition of the very military buzz cut.
It may not sound like a big deal, but seeing young players with hair in the final was a revolution, given that the Koshien, which pits the best teams from Japan's 47 counties against each other twice a year, remains steeped in tradition. Players take part in an oath-taking ceremony on the first day of the tournament, pick up some dirt on the playing field – which they keep as a souvenir or give to those who supported them – the sirens sound at the start of each game, the retro outfits and, of course, the clean-shaven cut.
The Koshien, the antechamber for pro-level baseball and a mandatory step for future great players – the latest being Shohei Ohtani, currently playing for the Los Angeles Angels in the American Major League – is always a very popular event and airs live on television. "A summer that should never be repeated is a summer without the sound of a bat hitting the ball and the fans cheering in the stands," said a 2018 article in the newspaper Asahi, which created the tournament in 1915.
Baseball was introduced to Japan by visiting American teachers at the beginning of the Meiji era (1868-1912) when the country opened up to the world. Called yakyu, it became the leading team sport in Japan, carving its place alongside traditional disciplines like kendo and sumo.
"Amateur baseball is part of our sporting heritage. It has been an educational tool used to impart discipline, teamwork and fighting spirit in students," noted Masaru Ikei, a professor at Keio University and yakyu expert. An idea corroborated by Suishu Tobita, a former baseball coach at Waseda University: "High school baseball is an education of the heart, the field is a classroom of purity, a gymnasium of morality."
This leads to its rigorous discipline, encompassing daily training sessions spanning from 3:30 to 6 pm – with a brief exemption for the three days of New Year's festivities – and a mandatory commitment to humility and selflessness in service of the team. During his first year of high school, Ichiro Suzuki, one of the greatest Japanese players of all time, did the laundry and cooked the rice for his team. It's in this context that the initiation rite of shaving one's head became the norm.
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