(2019 - Documentary)



Running Time

1h 34m



Country / Language

USA / Japanese, English



Director

Ema Ryan Yamazaki



Synopsis

Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in Koshien, Japan’s national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include US baseball stars Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. As popular as America’s World Series, the stakes are beyond high in this single-elimination tournament. For Coach Mizutani, cleaning the grounds and greeting guests are equally important as honing baseball skills, however, demonstrating discipline, sacrifice and unwavering dedication. Director Ema Ryan Yamazaki follows Mizutani and his team on their quest to win the 100th annual Koshien, and, in the process, goes beyond baseball to reveal the heart of the Japanese national character.

Interview with Director

"After living in New York for nine years and returning to Japan in 2017, I had a renewed outlook of the country I grew up in. I was overly grateful of the trains running on time, of people lining up for things, and everyone generally being considerate of one another: things that are normal in Japan, but what I’d learned to be not necessarily so outside of Japan.



It was at this time that I watched Koshien, the annual summer high school baseball tournament, which I hadn’t seen in a decade. I saw in high school baseball — the helmets in a perfect line, the strict adherence to rules, the team-first mentality — a microcosm of Japanese society itself.



But in recent years, being one of the most extreme part of society, the Koshien culture had been forced to re-examine its values. Learning that the 100th Koshien was upon us, we thought picking high school baseball as a way to examine a changing Japan would make a documentary that could help explain the mysteries of Japan to the outside world.



We hope our audience will have deepened their understanding of Japan: the kind of society it is, its qualities, and challenges in these modern times. Much of the struggle Japan faces is universal — how to keep tradition while adapting to the influences of globalization, and how to honor where we have come from while facing a future that is no longer the same.



I often feel that Japan is only known for a few specific things internationally — sushi and anime, to name a few. I hope the film provides a more complicated and human view of Japan, and provides hints of understanding of why Japan is the way it is — where it has come from and where it might be headed." --Jenna Dorsi, Women and Hollywood

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