Make Believe Mailer #123: Jock Rock
The Action Isn't Just On The Diamond!
It’s a familiar tradition to anyone who has spent a lazy summer in Japan. At the end of every game in the Japanese High School Baseball Championship — better known as “Summer Koshien” due to the season it takes place and the famed stadium it plays out in — players from each team face and bow at one another. Following this, the winning squad lines up to hear the school’s official song played over the PA system. A bunch of adolescent boys then sing the words, often with tears streaming down their faces as their teenage baseball dream continues, before running to the cheering section.
Summer Koshien is a lot like America’s March Madness, in the sense that it’s a group of students representing institutions from all over the country coming together for a tournament lacking the polish of the pro leagues but making up for it with passion and unpredictability. Where they differ is in how they play out. The NCAA tourney is at its best in its first four days, when viewers get a consistent hit of basketball, to the point of sensory overload. Summer Koshien, meanwhile, lasts nearly a month. Unless you have a connection to a school participating or just really love your home prefecture, the games become akin to radio for most in Japan, something to be put on in the background while going about your day, piquing interest during a tight contest late or turning into white noise as a bunch of teens grin their way through a 12-0 drubbing.
The music of Summer Koshien, then, is vital to taking it all in, whether that’s coming from the student brass bands providing a nonstop cheering soundtrack or from those songs celebrating the winners. It gives cues to what’s happening, adds to the atmosphere and helps create the pageantry central to this long-running event.
I was not alone, then, in being jolted out of my half-paying-attention mind during this year’s Summer Koshien whenever Kyoto Kokusai won a game. All the familiar sights and sounds play out, up until the point the school’s song starts playing. That’s when something super rare can be heard at the event — Korean.
Kyoto Kokusai was started its existence in 1947 as a school for Koreans living in Japan. The school changed in 2004 to accept all students regardless of background, though it places an emphasis on shaping “global leaders,” particularly through language studies in Japanese, English and Korean. It continues to have deep ties with South Korea as well, recognized as a valid school in that neighboring country too. And its history has remained…most notably via the song, sung in Korean.
That one has been played a lot at Summer Koshien, most recently after Kyoto Kokusai rallied to beat Aomori Yamada High School Wednesday morning to lock in a spot in the championship game, happening this Friday against East Tokyo representative Kanto Daiichi. As has happened following everyone of the team’s victories, phrases like “Kankokugo No Koka1" (“Korean School Song”) and “Hangul No Koka2” (“Hangul School Song,” referring to the use of the Korean alphabet that appeared on TV when the number was broadcast) started gaining steam on Twitter, primarily from negative viewpoints ranging from “why didn’t they write a beautiful Japanese song, that’s what we want to hear” to directly xenophobic. Others, though, argue this is actually a sign of a more internationalized and diverse Japan.
Complicating this is the song’s history, which originally featured a term implying Korean jurisdiction of the disputed waters between the two countries, but was changed in 2021 the school’s debut at Summer Koshien, to something much more anodyne to avoid controversy. Oh right, this isn’t even the first time going through this, as Kyoto Kokusai has become a staple at these tournaments in the 2020s, meaning this same loop has played out multiple times. In 2024, however, it happens against the backdrop of the finals, so the mainstream Japanese media is extra attentive to it, with coverage so far on random Korean professors angry about NHK’s changes to the ocean references and on how Korean media is handling it all.
Of course, this stems from Twitter and the ever-hysteric arms of Japanese traditional media, so it would be unfair to assume this is a widely held concern, especially taking into account people are usually half paying attention to this competition. Most are simply watching teens savor the fleeting moments of youth via baseball. Honestly, look at anything related to the school itself online, and they are just “yay, that’s cool!”
UPDATE: Should have included this sooner but…Kyoto Kokusai won the whole dang tournament, so naturally the song playing at the end ended up being, for at least one more day, huge online news.
Yet I do think it highlights the important and downright passionate role music plays at Summer Koshien. Need a less geopolitically charged example? Well, let’s stick with Kyoto Kokusai. One student in the cheering section went viral thanks to his supportive freestyle rap he delivered live on broadcast.
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Days later, he popped up again with an even more charged up bit of rhyming. Back at the Spring Koshien tournament, they met Aomori Yamada in the first round…and lost on a walk-off in the bottom of the ninth. During Wednesday’s semi-final rematch, the school’s go-to MC unveiled a “revenge rap” aimed at Aomori. Note how everyone around him geek out after he delivers it. That’s passion.
Save for maybe professional wrestling, I can’t think of a corner of Japanese society that intersects and just flat out mirrors the world of idol music like baseball. The way people talk about Summer Koshien often sounds like it could come off a note card from the AKB48 elections of yesteryear — the beauty and passion of youth, the transience of time, the memories we make3. It’s fitting, then, that all levels of baseball but especially the high school level resembles this corner of pop musically. You have a lot of talk about what constitutes the “right” kind of sound, but you also get pure goofballery. Take one school from Wakayama Prefecture, which became famous for having a reggae-style school song.
I’ll point you to this YouTube video compiling even more non-traditional or unique school songs sung at Summer Koshien, especially interesting for the attempts at J-pop a few take (though they also sometimes sound like gum commercials or something). This is a great part of the musical aspect of the competition…but not the best or even most interesting, despite sometimes sparking international drama.
For that, one has to go to the student cheering sections. Chants and other musical motivation play a huge role in all levels of Japanese baseball — it’s the most immediate difference in atmosphere between a pro game here versus an MLB game in the States — yet it’s especially vital at Summer Koshien. It isn’t just the players getting a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but also other students and especially members of the school’s brass band club, which gets to travel out and also get time in the spotlight.
That passion and excitement is great, but what I personally love about this is hearing what gets played at Koshien. Many schools write their own songs. Others borrow from the high school baseball song catalog, or take cues from Japanese professional teams. Others draw from J-pop, especially if there’s some kind of baseball connection to be found. Idol duo Pink Lady’s “Southpaw” has been a staple practically since coming out in 1978 for example, with every school putting its own twist on it.
Yet personally, it’s the way high school bands end up interpreting non-Japanese music for the purpose of cheering on the baseball team that fascinates me most. Some of the go-to numbers are cliche. Yeah, “We Will Rock You” makes sense in this context. Then you get something like “African Symphony,” arguably the most famous baseball-adjacent cheering song in the country. Originally written and recorded by American artist Van McCoy4 in 1974, “African Symphony” would soon be covered by various symphonies, including Japanese composer Naohiro Iwai, who included it in the fifth volume highlighting musical pieces for brass band. It reached the sheet music put in front of students across the archipelago the following decade, and soon made it to the Koshien stands, becoming a staple ever since.
There’s all kinds of great examples of this over the years, and the song selection is always changing. As one article for sports publication Number details, this year’s Summer Koshien featured the time-bending selection of Shiga Gakuen. They’ve gone viral for performing the jazz standard “Take The A Train” and doing a little energetic dance alongside it…and for also playing a song from Undertale joined by a different energetic dance.
If we’re talking about how Summer Koshien offers a glance into the weird and wonderful ways that music travels…well, we have to focus on “Jock Rock.”
Here’s another phrase that’s all over Twitter during the month of August, but for actually fun reasons. Lots of schools play this energetic number now, but it was made famous by Chiben Gakuen Wakayama’s brass band (who also popularized “African Symphony” during their first appearance at the tourney in 1987…making this probably the most influential high school brass band in the country?). They traditionally only play it from the eight inning on, and only when their team has runners in scoring position. When they bust this out, it’s a sign some high drama is about to unfold…and people love hearing it.
It’s not an original composition though. It’s not some long-lost standard given new energy for summer baseball. It’s not based off a pop song, and some high school club director didn’t attempt to make sense of those ESPN compilations from the 1990s.
Nope, “Jock Rock” originates as a demo song included in a piece of 1990s Yamaha musical hardware.
“Jock Rock” was one of many songs created by Yamaha’s global team to flex the new “XG” MIDI format. All kinds of tone generators, keyboards and other instruments came with this song — and hundreds more — programmed into it to display the capabilities of this technology, or distributed via special CDs and websites. American Rob Rowberry composed “Jock Rock,” which to me sounds less like the “Jock Jams” of the ‘90s and closer to like late ‘80s Sportscenter or NFL Primetime themes. It’s just a genre exercise, slotted next to exercises in excessive rock among others.
I don’t think Yamaha or Rowberry ever expected this to be anything more than a software demonstration. Yet as mysound magazine detailed in a great article, Chiben Gakuen Wakayama’s music director found himself in a pickle in 2000. He tried to have a new song for the brass band to play at Summer Koshien every time the baseball team made it in. Problem was, the school had become too good by the start of the 21st century, and were making it nearly every year…leaving him with no ideas what to do.
Luckily for him, he came across “Jock Rock,” purely through desperation. Dude was just listening to these XG examples for any inspiration…and found something that, if he sped up ever so slightly, could work in a baseball setting. The band debuted it at that Summer Koshien…which Chiben Gakuen Wakayama won, with some games coming down to very dramatic finishes.
It hasn’t left since, and continues to wow everyone who watches, either with their full attention or as background noise. And it’s all thanks to a software demo. That’s the magic of Summer Koshien for you.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
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韓国語の校歌
ハングルの校歌
There’s also the similarity of the idol life being a drain on you physically and emotionally…which is quite similar to high school baseball (especially if you are a pitcher).
Best known in the U.S. for “The Hustle.”