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Baseball tournament officials defend the ban on female students as a necessary measure to help protect their safety.

Tournament officials banned a schoolgirl from a practice game at Koshien Stadium on 2 August in the lead-up to the 98th National High School Baseball Championship tournament, citing concerns for her safety. The girl, who acts as manager for her high school baseball team, was passing the ball to players on the ground as part of their usual fielding practice, and had been on the field for roughly ten minutes when tournament officials noticed her and prohibited her from continuing.

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Tournament regulations specify that only males are allowed to play on the grounds as part of “hazard prevention” measures. When it comes to practice games, the gender segregation rule is still enforced, although not clearly specified in the guidelines, which instead highlights the need for players to dress in uniforms and not tracksuits. The team’s female manager (pictured below) was dressed in a uniform, according to these regulations.

Shigeru Hirose, the teacher at the head of the school’s baseball club, apologised for the incident, saying he misunderstood the specifics and only thought to let her on the field as she had been working incredibly hard with the team throughout the year.

The female manager, who is now in her third and last year at the team’s integrated junior and senior high school in Oita Prefecture, had previously been specialising in ballet, but in her formal junior high school graduation statement, she expressed her desire to become manager of the baseball team, with the goal of taking them to the tournament at Koshien.

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The esteemed tournament, held over two weeks during the August summer holiday period, is an event that schools around the country all strive to get into. However, female participation in the event remains a contentious issue, with a similar incident in 2008 revealing the need for a review when a third-year female student from Karyo High School in Yamaguchi Prefecture was also banned from participating in a pre-tournament practice game at the same venue. Safety was cited as the reason for the ban, with the difference in physical strength between the sexes said to be the primary concern.

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While baseball is a popular sport in Japanese high schools, female teams are rare and usually only exist in private schools, who compete at the National High School Women’s Baseball Championship in Hyogo Prefecture every August. Girls with an interest in the sport who attend public schools often resort to joining their male baseball team at school in the position of managers or assistants.

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The latest event has sparked debate in Japan, with many people having no previous knowledge of the ban on women in tournament regulations at Koshien Stadium. While some believe gender segregation in the sport is warranted, others wonder why the ground of Koshien is being treated like the male-only stage of traditional kabuki theatre and the equally male-exclusive sumo ring.

Source: Hachima Kikou
Top Image: Wikimedia Commons/Kentaro Iemoto@Tokyo
Insert Images: Wikimedia Commons/百楽兎, Wikimedia Commons/Corpse Reviver, Flickr/Xiaojun Deng, Wikimedia Commons/Ogiyoshisan