Three Years' Worth of "Wakaki-chi" | Hiroyuki Ishida, Dean, Graduate School of Health Management
June 6, 2023
Following my previous entry , this diary entry is about baseball. On the last weekend of May, the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League's Waseda-Keio rivalry game was held at Jingu Stadium. Following the reclassification of COVID-19 to Class 5 under the Infectious Disease Control Law, the cheering sections were brought back for the first time in three seasons. Full 100% capacity was permitted, and vocal cheering was once again allowed. The first time I watched a Tokyo Big6 Waseda-Keio rivalry game was in 1969, the year I entered the Yochisha Elementary School. Although the cheering sections have been a familiar sight to me for over 50 years, I am surely not the only one who felt a deep sense of emotion seeing the third-base side cheering section filled to the brim with Keio students and Keio University alumni, especially after having experienced the unusual spectacle of games with no spectators.
I believe the true pleasure of university sports lies in the dynamic of cheering for close friends who study alongside you on campus. In fact, I also went to Jingu Stadium many times during my student years to cheer for my friends. Among my classmates was Kazuaki Ueda (from Yawatahama High School), who was drafted and joined the Yomiuri Giants. As fate would have it, I later ended up working with Ueda on team-related projects, and even now, once we start talking about the Waseda-Keio rivalry, we can't stop. Although our positions are different, I feel it is a precious asset that the Waseda-Keio rivalry has left us. Unfortunately, at that time, Keio University's batting lineup was struggling, and they faced a series of tough games. However, in 1985, the tide turned significantly with the enrollment of Ryo Shimura, a talented left-handed pitcher. I heard that at the time, Shimura, turning the Juku's weak hitting into a strength, took the mound each time with the mindset that "if I give up even one run, we lose." This apparently led to his still-unbroken Tokyo Big6 Baseball records for the most consecutive shutout victories (5 games) and the most consecutive scoreless innings (53 innings). Inspired by Shimura's spirit, the fielders must have been roused to action; with batting support centered around Shinichi Nakazawa (from Toin Gakuen), Keio University achieved its first championship in 26 seasons in the autumn league of that same year.
By the way, in its Mid- to Long-Term Plan 2022-2026.pdf , Keio University explicitly lists, as an item under V. Social Contribution, the development and enhancement of the value of traditional exchange games, including the Waseda-Keio rivalry, and the revival of Keio students' identity post-COVID. While I welcome this as an idea unique to the Juku, it can also be interpreted as a sense of crisis that these traditions, passed down uninterruptedly (in a sense, by default) from our predecessors, have been severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the famous words declared by President Ito in June 2021, "to take back campus life (from COVID-19)," the Juku succeeded in bringing students back to campus after making various preparations, but for extracurricular activities and cheering, we had no choice but to proceed step by step, as it required coordination with government decisions. Meanwhile, for better or worse, various technologies and systems such as real-time and on-demand online streaming have developed, creating an environment where watching and cheering can be done through non-in-person methods. Amid concerns that the transition between old and new media might reduce the number of students who desire to watch games in real-time at the stadium, we approached this spring's Waseda-Keio rivalry. Unfortunately, the baseball team's performance was not improving, and the Waseda-Keio rivalry became a contest unrelated to the championship race, which only increased my anxiety (incidentally, I have been appointed as the director of the Keio University Cheerleading Team). Fortunately, from May 8 onward, normal cheering became possible, but would Keio students really come to Jingu Stadium under these circumstances? Unexpectedly, it seems this sense of crisis was shared by the members of the Keio University Cheerleading Team and the students of the Waseda-Keio Rivalry Support Committee. I heard they brainstormed various ideas and made preparations to bring Keio students and Keio University alumni back to Jingu. I imagine that for the current fourth-year students and below, who were affected by COVID-19 from the moment they enrolled, their activities were a process of trial and error, as they had no firsthand experience of the Waseda-Keio rivalry or the cheering sections. But their efforts bore fruit splendidly, and on both Saturday and Sunday, the infield and outfield cheering sections were a full house. The cheering sections, filled with everyone from students of the affiliated schools to undergraduate and graduate students, also had many international students, heralding a new era for the cheering sections. Partly because Sunday's game was a historic landslide victory, I felt like we sang three years' worth of "Wakaki-chi" that had been suppressed by COVID-19 all at once. Even after the game ended, most of the Keio students and Keio University alumni spontaneously remained in the cheering sections, and witnessing the sight of them singing "Oka no Ue" with their arms around each other's shoulders, a sight I should have been accustomed to for over 50 years, brought a lump to my throat. And this enthusiasm would carry over to the third game of the series. For the game held the following Tuesday after a rain delay, many Keio students, taking advantage of canceled classes, came to Jingu, and the cheering sections were as lively as on the weekend.
Perhaps I had a somewhat biased view of the sensibilities of the net-native generation, due to preconceptions about the diversification of entertainment itself and the ways to enjoy it (my apologies). The scene I witnessed in the Waseda-Keio rivalry cheering sections this time—cheering for friends doing their best on the field, linking arms and singing "Wakaki-chi" and "Oka no Ue" within the bond of the Juku—was a déjà-vu of when we cheered for Ueda and Shimura. It seems that the emotional connection students crave has not changed at all, then or now. If anything, I even felt that this desire was stronger among the current students, precisely because of the three-year interval.
Taking a slightly cynical view, one might say that this recent enthusiasm was just a celebratory boom following the end of the COVID-19 restrictions. To ensure this does not end as a one-off celebration, and at the same time to steadily advance the Juku's mid- to long-term plan, the true test will be the autumn and next season's Waseda-Keio rivalry games. I look forward to the continued success of the baseball team and all the students involved in preparing for the Waseda-Keio rivalry.