May 7, 2007
High school sports in Japan
Now that our English website will try to stay current with our many club's results, here's some background information on high school sport's events in Japan.
The Kanto Championships is mentioned often in sport’s club results, because all teams in all sports are competing at their city level tournaments to qualify for their respective sport’s Kanto Regional Championships. At the Kanto event, teams are normally trying to qualify for the All-Japan National Championships for their sports. Sometimes Kanto Championships are held twice a year, once being just an extra event to help prepare for the other Kanto Championships used to qualify for Nationals later in the year.
For example, there may be a spring Tokyo tournament to qualify for the summer Kanto championships, but that is as far as it goes, whereas the fall Tokyo tournament will be the qualifier for the winter Kanto Championships, which is in turn the actual National's qualifier.
The Kanto region is a geographical area in the middle, east part of Honshu, the largest island in Japan. The region encompasses seven prefectures within the Greater Tokyo Area: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa. Within its boundaries, slightly more than 40 percent of the land area is the Kanto plain. The rest consists of the hills and mountains that form the land borders. (Wikipedia)
Other than the All-Japan National Championships for each sport, there is an even more high-profile multi-sporting event called the "Inter-High’’, kind of a mini Olympic Games for high school sports. It is held in one prefecture each year in summer. There is heavy media coverage of Inter-High games, with many student athletes becoming famous if they win their respective divisions.
The Inter-High is very exciting to attend, as one city fills up with athletes, coaches, officials, volunteers, and spectators for each of their own sports from all over Japan, plus loads of media, thereby everyone is bumping into each other all over town, creating a fun, festive atmosphere.
Some of the larger team sports, like baseball and soccer, also have separate skill divisions and popular tournament leagues, some which are broadcast on television.