Marinerds, etc.

ラストゲーム 最後の早慶戦 [official site]

If you are expecting to watch a movie about baseball, you will find that this is a movie about World War 2. If you are expecting to watch a movie about World War 2, you will find that this is a movie about baseball.

Soukeisen is a word meaning "Contest between Waseda University and Keio University", and while it can be used to describe pretty much any sport in existence, since the two universities have a long-standing rivalry in every sport, by far the best-known sports rivalry, and best-attended game, is the annual meetong between the two universities' baseball teams, which started over a century ago. Nowadays, the Soukeisen series is the last weekend of the Tokyo Big 6 University League season, and with the recent surge of stars on both teams, is a sellout event at Jingu Stadium.

But, that's not how it always was.

This movie takes place in 1943. After the 1942 season, in the midst of the war, the Japanese ministry of education dissolved the Tokyo Big 6 League, claiming that baseball was the "sport of the enemy". Despite that, the Waseda baseball club continued to practice baseball at Totsuka Stadium, mostly due to the leadership of a man named Suishu Tobita, who had been a player for Waseda near the turn of the century, and then spent years and years coaching the team afterwards. He was famous for a phrase, "一球入魂", which basically means "pour your soul into every pitch", and he tried to teach his players the spirit of baseball, as it were.

The movie opens with a beautiful breathtaking panorama of a reconstructed Totsuka Stadium, complete with Waseda baseball guys wearing the antique style uniforms and equipment, happily playing ball. You wouldn't even realize anything was strange about the situation, until one student, Junji Toda, goes home to meet with his family. His brother, a former star pitcher for the Waseda team, is dressed in full Japanese army uniform, and is apparently on leave to see his family for a few days. The brothers talk together, joke together, even note the old notches on the wall from where they used to measure height, seeing that they are now the same exact height.

After you've been introduced to the main character and his family, you meet his second family, the Waseda baseball team: his roomate, Kurokawa; the old housekeeper Wakasugi and her daughter (granddaughter?) Tomoko; the good-looking baseball manager/upperclassman Aizawa; and of course, the head coach and faculty sponsor of the team, Mr. Tobita.

Junji's brother heads off to war. They go to the stadium one last time, Junji holding his brother's sword like a bat, and his brother pitching the ball to him. "Take care of our family," he instructs him, and then he is gone.

Shortly afterwards, we see the newspaper headlines: the Japanese government will no longer allow university students to be deferred from the draft. Starting in December, all men aged 20 or above must prepare to go to the front lines of battle in the war. (You see, it's a war movie after all.)

The president of Keio, Mr. Koizumi, comes to visit Mr. Tobita. He has a request from the Keio baseball team: "We'd like to play against Waseda one final time before we go off to war. Let's make some good memories." Tobita agrees, and when he tells the team about the proposal, they are overjoyed.

Unfortunately, there's two major things blocking the event from progressing. One, the president of Waseda University won't allow the game to happen, because of the serious situation in Japan brought about by the war. Two, they can't do it at Jingu stadium, since it's being used for army training.

Even Totsuka Stadium gets taken over by army training; there are scenes where the baseball club is practicing on the same field as the military training for students. A baseball rolls over and the military captains yell at the ball players to "stop disturbing their important work", before Tobita steps in to prevent any further problems.

Well, Waseda's team continues practicing baseball anyway, because they believe in Mr. Tobita, and they believe in baseball, and it's really the only happy thing they have anyway, in the light of having to go off to war. (Well, the only thing, aside from every member of the baseball team writing a love letter to the housekeeper's daughter, but that's beside the point.) The Waseda president continues to insist that there will be no game, but in the meantime, the events keep building up to everyone telling Tobita they're counting on him to make it happen, such as Junji's brother dying and his whole family getting into a huge dramatic argument over whether Junji should be allowed to continue playing baseball.

So naturally with some perseverance and a lot of talking, and eventually just agreeing to go ahead and have the game behind the backs of the Powers That Be, as an "unofficial friendly game" the final Waseda-Keio game is scheduled to be held on October 16, 1943, at Totsuka Stadium.

In the movie, as in real life, the Waseda team plasters the Keio team 10-1 (as the story goes, the Keio team hadn't been practicing and the game happened with very short notice), but that isn't the important thing. The important thing is that the players got together for that final game and created a memory before going off to die in war. The scenes were reenacted as they supposedly happened in real life: the president of Keio sits with the students instead of in the nice seats. The teams got up and sang EACH OTHER'S fight songs as a salute after the game.

And naturally, footage of these guys is made to blur into the actual footage of the students taking part in military training five days later, to give some "names to faces", as it were.

The only thing is, aside from Tobita and Koizumi, none of the names of players in the movie are actually of real people from the real Soukeisen. The closest is probably that they had a guy portraying Keio's legendary player Kaoru Betto, but that wasn't the name they used for the character.

I watched this movie on a Friday afternoon in Urawa, and I would guess the average age of the patrons in the theater was around 60. Most of them were crying by the end (including this older woman down the row from me who was outright bawling). I have to admit that I had to bite back tears at a few scenes near the end; if nothing else, the movie really did capture the urgency of playing the final game plus the strong bonds that these players had to each other and to baseball itself, and how many obstacles they had to overcome just for that one final day in the sun before going off to die in the war.

I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this movie to non-Japanese people, to be honest. If you are interested in historical baseball movies and just want to see some gorgeous reconstructions of college ball from the WWII era, it's definitely worth it for that aspect, but if you really start thinking about all of the ramifications of the war, you'll get really depressed, I think. I felt distinctly uncomfortable leaving the theater, just for being an American, and I have to admit I'm almost worried about whether it's politically incorrect for me to review this movie at all.

I do think it is an important story to be told, though.

Another English preview of the movie is here in the Daily Yomiuri, written a few months before the movie came out, but has good background.

And here is an English article from Waseda's newspaper from a few years ago, reflecting on the last Soukeisen, including quotes from Takeo Mori (the real second baseman in the game) and some photos and a shot of a scorecard from the game.

Wikipedia article in Japanese about the final game: 出陣学徒壮行早慶戦, which means "farewell Soukeisen game to send students off to the battle front", essentially.

On that note, today is the first day of baseball for the Tokyo Big 6 University League! The weekend opens with Meiji playing against Tokyo and Keio playing against Hosei, and next weekend Waseda and Rikkio will join the fray. The season continues until the weekend of November 1st, when we can see a much less depressing Soukeisen. I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing some exciting college baseball games this fall.

Today is the birthday of one Bobby V,
Who starred in a film that you all ought to see.
It airs at 9 Eastern, on ESPN,
And it has a good dose of some pure Bobby Zen.

The filmmakers took on a fresh attitude;
tried biking and subways and every town's food;
To learn about yakyuu -- that was the main plan --
But also to bring home a slice of Japan.

The camera followed through cold days and warm;
adventures on Fuji in darkness and storm;
They saw highschool baseball, and sumo as well,
and tried karaoke and gave Bobby hell.

Of baseball, the passion's what really appealed --
The true dedication both on- and off-field.
They filmed from the dugout, the rooftop, the stands,
And captured the spirit of players and fans.

To Bobby: we thank you for being so vocal
on improving the game AND on keeping it local.
So for all that you've done and for all that you do --
Have another great year! Happy birthday to you!!



(Photo taken by Larry Rocca, and presented without explanation, because it's funnier this way, I think.)

This movie is about hockey, not about baseball, but it does take place in Hokkaido, so maybe it's vaguely kind of sort of related to this blog?

Official Site - go-smilers.jp
Movie trailer on Youtube

It's Christmas. It's time for a feel-good story about Good winning another battle in the eternal struggle against Evil, with Love as the catalyst. Good has taken shape in the form of a rag-tag bunch of 12-year-olds in Hokkaido, a hockey team calling themselves the "Smilers". Evil is the "Thunderbirds", another schoolboy hockey team which dresses in black, moves like an army regiment, and is coached by an egomaniac.

Love... well, let's step back from this all for a minute.

Igaya Masaya is a professional hockey player who never smiles, for reasons we discover later on. It's Christmas 2007, and he comes back to visit the ice rink that he spent so much time at as a child. A few kids ask him for autographs, and then he sees a figure-skater on the ice. She's beautiful, graceful, and immediately reminds him of his first love, a figure-skater named Rena, who he met twenty years ago. He's transfixed by the skater on the ice, and gets lost in his thoughts.

Does that sound like a flashback to you? Sure does! We're whisked back to autumn 1987, where a 13-year-old Masaya is also watching a beautiful figure-skater on the ice at the same exact rink. She's beautiful, graceful, and he's completely struck dumb the way only a 13-year-old boy who has just completely fallen headfirst into a crush can be. The rest of his hockey team crashes into him and makes fun of him for staring at her like that, but she just smiles and skates off.

Meet the Smilers. They're just your average group of 12-year-old hockey players in the middle of nowhere in Hokkaido... kind of. We find out later that all of them have their own backstories and troubles; one of them has divorced parents, another has a sister stuck in a wheelchair, another has been endlessly bullied all through his life. Masaya's parents died in a fire when he was young. Undoubtedly their hardships is what brings them all closer together as a group.

Meet their coach. Shuhei (played by enigmatic screen and stage actor Mirai Moriyama) is an ex-tapdancer who moved up to Hokkaido to be with his girlfriend Shizuka (who, incidentally, is Rena's figure-skating coach). Shuhei wants to marry Shizuka (played by Italian-Japanese model/actress Rosa Katoh), but of course, there's a slight obstacle: Shizuka's stereotypically-strict father, who completely does not approve of a wacko like Shuhei. Shuhei says that he's come up to Hokkaido to be a teacher at a local elementary school, and Shizuka's father wants to know about his leadership skills -- and mentions that the ice hockey team's coach just quit, so Shuhei should take over. Shuhei replies, "Sure! Leave it to me, my hopefully-future-father-in-law!! I'll coach ice hockey!!" (Can he skate? No. Does he know anything about hockey? No. Has he ever coached a team? No. Does that matter? Apparently not.) Shizuka's father challenges Shuhei to have his team actually win a game and then maybe he'll allow the two of them to marry.

Naturally, Shuhei's lack of experience allows him to make "brilliant" decisions, putting the runt of the team in as the goalie, and coming up with offense plays based on tap-dancing rhythms. They win the game, and Shizuka's father says "I changed my mind. Win the CHAMPIONSHIP and I'll allow you to marry."

No problem, right? Well, as one of the kids points out, there is a very big problem: a hockey team called the Thunderbirds, who basically clean the floor with every team they face, every year. Their coach is a womanizing asshat named Tsurugi who is, of course, Shizuka's sempai from college and ex-boyfriend. He, of course, intends to get back together with Shizuka when his team defeats the Smilers and Shuhei is out of the picture. Meet love triangle Number 1.

Love triangle Number 2 sort of falls flat on its face early on in the plot, fortunately. See, there's a figure skater named Chinatsu who has a huge crush on Masaya, and she's really jealous of Rena. One day Chinatsu asks out Masaya, and he turns her down. As we find out, Chinatsu's ice skating talent is only matched by her ability to beat the living crap out of random guys who piss her off. So she punches Masaya's lights out, and he winds up in the hospital, and Shuhei invites Chinatsu to take Masaya's place on the team, where she can (and does) go beat up on opponents instead. Chinatsu is subsequently joined on the team by Shevchenko, a blonde-haired Russian exchange student who Shuhei recruits when he sees him Cossack-dancing in the hallway, and by Ichiryouta, a misfit from the sumo club whose size and skills work well for him on the ice. Yes, it's quite an assortment of characters.

While injured, Masaya runs into Rena at the hospital, which if you've watched enough Japanese doramas and movies, signifies that Rena has been diagnosed with Something Fatal and is Destined to Die by the end of the movie. However, Masaya doesn't know that, and so he finally gets up the guts to go out on a date with her. They date for a while. She becomes sicker and faints and has to go into the hospital, naturally right before the Big Hockey Tournament starts.

The team -- even Chinatsu -- comes to support Rena in the hospital every day, first by visiting and later by banging their hockey sticks on the ground at night and shouting her name. (At first this evokes the ire of a security guard who chases them off, but when he finds out what's going on, he even helps them find her when she's transferred to intensive care for chemotherapy.) Rena's bedside table has exactly two items on it: the music box Masaya gives her, and the tournament bracket with the Smilers' progression marked with it. By day, the team is working together, training together, winning together. Shuhei still never actually learns to skate, resulting in hilarious scenes every time he tries to run out on the ice to high-five his team.

You can pretty much guess the ending -- heck, if you saw the previews at all you should know what's going to happen before you even sit down in your seat at the theater. However, this movie is so funny and lively and wonderful and poignant all at once that it really doesn't make a difference. I laughed, I cried. I enjoyed every minute of it and encourage you to go see it too, if you are in Japan.

Rookie of the Year (1993, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Gary Busey)

This was on TV last night completely randomly and I watched it with my mom. I'd never seen it before. I'm not great at reviewing movies, but I've mostly been off the net the last few days so this is what I've got to work with :)

In short, this is a fun little movie to watch if you see it playing on TV late at night, but otherwise it's not really worth your time unless you're either a 12-year-old kid wishing you could play for the Cubs, or if you like kid movies with Disney endings.

Thomas Ian Nicholas, who six years later would play Kevin in American Pie (which I realized about halfway through this movie), plays Henry, a 12-year-old kid who breaks his arm in a bizarre baseball accident and it heals in a bizarre way that allows him to snap some tendons and suddenly throw a baseball 100 miles per hour. Gary Busey plays a veteran pitcher who's all but done for in his career. Bruce Altman plays Jack, a guy who is dating Henry's single mom (Amy Morton). Jack becomes Henry's "manager", and you basically spend the rest of the movie learning to hate him and to love Busey's pitcher character, essentially.

In addition to having to figure out how to throw 100mph and actually throw strikes, Henry also has to figure out how to talk to 12-year-old girls at the school cafeteria, and how to not piss off his two best friends, who follow him around just about everywhere.

Pretty much everything about this movie is predictable, and in the end everyone lives happily ever after, but there are a few good laughs along the way; John Candy plays the role of the announcer in the style of Bob Uecker in Major League, and has a couple of good one-liners. Daniel Stern, just a few years removed from his role as one of the burglars in Home Alone, plays the insane Cubs pitching coach who's constantly getting himself locked away various places, to the benefit of everyone else involved; and he bears a scary resemblance to Nate Robertson, the current Tigers pitcher.

Watch it with a little kid and you won't be too unhappy about it.