This Year's Coordinator in Serbia | Hiroyuki Ishida, Dean of the Graduate School of Health Management
May 13, 2025
Following up on mylast post, I'll be talking about ice hockey again. I am currently in Belgrade, Serbia, working on the organization of the Ice Hockey World Championship. Around this same time last year, I was inRiga, Latvia. Many of you might wonder why the World Championship is being held in places like Serbia or Latvia, but the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) hosts numerous World Championships categorized by gender, age, and world ranking. In total, 30 to 40 tournaments called "World Championships" for both men and women are held annually around the globe. The highest of these is the "IIHF World Championship." Japan's women's team competes in this top category, while the men's team competes in the category just below it, the "World Championship Division I Group A." This strategy of holding many tournaments throughout the year is part of the IIHF's plan to explicitly demonstrate that "ice hockey is not just a sport for North America and Northern and Eastern Europe." As you know, sports like baseball and softball, which are popular only in specific regions, often have their "internationality" questioned, repeatedly sparking debate about their status as Olympic sports. To avoid such criticism, the IIHF spares no financial or human support, firmly backing the federations of developing ice hockey nations. Regardless of their strength, weakness, or the size of their player base, the IIHF strives to involve them as "partners" and promote ice hockey as a global sport. In fact, member nations include Middle Eastern countries like Kuwait and the UAE, and there are even World Championships held in Mexico. As part of this support, the IIHF dispatches a chairperson, an officiating coach (to support tournament operations), and a medical supervisor to every tournament, but this is not without its challenges for the dispatched officials. The role I have been appointed to, medical supervisor, is filled by a team of about 20 people selected from around the world, and each member is dispatched to about two tournaments per year. Things have become a bit complicated recently due to political disputes. For example, the participating countries in the tournament I am currently at are Serbia, Israel, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UAE. However, Australia, the original host nation, withdrew for political reasons, and Serbia was hastily chosen as the replacement. On the other hand, Serbia was subjected to NATO bombings during the wars of independence in the Balkan Peninsula, and some of its citizens harbor less-than-friendly feelings toward the Netherlands, a NATO member country. I heard that arranging the Dutch team's hotel accommodations was a struggle. Naturally, some consideration must be given to the nationality of the officials dispatched by the IIHF, and I imagine I was chosen because, as a Japanese person, I am not involved in these political or ethnic conflicts. I don't recall studying world history properly as a student and was ignorant of international politics, but since starting this job, I make sure to arrive on-site with a certain amount of prior knowledge to avoid stepping on any landmines. For this trip, information I gathered from films I had seen, such as "The High Sun" (directed by Dalibor Matanić, 2015) and "Quo Vadis, Aida?" (directed by Jasmila Žbanić, 2020), as well as from programs like NHK's "Eizo no Seiki" (Images of the Century), proved helpful. Even though it's just visual material, it's much better than going in empty-handed. And, though this isn't a commentary by Akemi Masuda, bits of trivia—like how Serbia's legendary heroes are Stojković and Djokovic, that Serbia is strong in water polo, or that Serbians as an ethnic group tend to be tall—often help in closing the distance with the local people.
Now, as for my main job, it primarily involves auditing whether the safety management system is in place according to the international federation's standards, responding when injuries or concussions actually occur, and coordinating with local medical institutions to address various requests from each country. Whether at the university, on overseas business trips, or even at home, my life is full of coordination, and it can be a bit exhausting.
Soon after the tournament began, an injured player was taken to the hospital, and I received a complaint, disguised as a petition, that they had to wait over two hours for an X-ray. I can certainly understand that the player and staff were nervous, but even though he is an athlete, he was a new patient and a foreigner to boot. Since he wasn't enrolled in the country's health insurance system, the administrative procedures for patient registration at the hospital were not going to be simple. I have had similar experiences many times when I participated in tournaments as part of a team. Yes, everyone just says whatever they want. I wanted to say to the country that made the request, "Could you do it any faster if the tournament were held in your country?" but I bit my tongue. As a coordinator, I can't just say, "It can't be helped." So, in the general meeting with the organizing side, I made a proposal: "On the premise that we respect each city's hospital situation and the national health insurance system, I would like to ask the hospital to consider the special nature of an international tournament and negotiate something like Disneyland's FastPass." But everyone just looked bewildered. Then I realized they had probably never been to Disneyland, so I had to correct my explanation.
Well, I work on these kinds of things in cooperation with the IIHF chairperson, and there are many moments when the skillful way the experienced chairperson finds a compromise, while acknowledging a certain amount of each party's claims, is very instructive. This is exactly what our graduate school's degree program,"Sports Management,"is all about. It would be great if more international tournaments could be held in our country, giving students opportunities to participate. However, not just for ice hockey, the hurdles to hosting international tournaments in Japan are surprisingly high in terms of facilities, community cooperation, transportation, and emergency medical systems. Amidst this situation, the 2025 Tokyo Deaflympics (a first for Japan!) will be held in September, followed by the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. Kodai Hirata (who completed the Ph.D. program at the Graduate School of Health Management and is a researcher at the Sports Medicine Research Center) will be involved in the former, and Tomohiro Manabe (an associate professor at the same graduate school) will be involved in the latter as a medical supervisor. I can only hope that by accumulating such experiences, the number of Keio students and Keio University alumni who are active not only as athletes but also on the supporting side will increase.
It is a great shame that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were held without spectators, meaning the new National Stadium, which sat there like the battleship Yamato at the end of the war, could not fully demonstrate its function. I am very much looking forward to seeing it finally show its true worth and welcome athletes and spectators from all over the world for the 2025 World Athletics Championships.
Photo 1: A scene from a meeting. Everyone is smiling for the photo, but it's not uncommon for heated exchanges of opinions to occur during the sessions.
Photo 2: The former General Staff building, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. I hear it has been intentionally left as is to prevent the memory of the bombing from fading.
Photo 3: At the end of Knez Mihailova Street, Belgrade's equivalent of Tokyo's Ginza, lies Kalemegdan Park, which houses a military museum displaying various military weapons and materials. The contrast with the peaceful scenery of the city was striking.