Stories from the Field 4 Public nomination

Young Baseball Players from Brazil Fulfill their Dream to Visit Japan!
- Baseball coaching by a JICA Volunteer *1 makes children’s dreams come true -

Commemorative photo from the friendly match with the Chikushi Endeavors, a junior-high club team, during the Manaus Country Club trip to Japan (Photo: Mr. MIYATA Ryusei)

The Manaus Country Club children meeting with Softbank Hawks players (Mr. Miyata is at the left end in the front row) (Photo: Mr. MIYATA Ryusei)

Many Brazilians of Japanese descent live in Manaus City in the northern region of Brazil, and many of the members of “Manaus Country Club,” a youth baseball team founded by the first-generation immigrants from Japan, are Japanese-Brazilians. Mr. MIYATA Ryusei, a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer for Nikkei Communities *2 of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), has served as the manager of the team since 2018. Mr. Miyata was a player in the Fukuoka University baseball team, and after graduating university, applied to the JICA Volunteer Program, inspired by his desire to contribute to international cooperation through baseball. Mr. Miyata began his assignment to teach baseball in Brazil, where fully-qualified baseball coaches were needed.

After meeting his team in Brazil, Mr. Miyata realized that they were much more “Brazilian style” than he expected.

“Some children only joined according to their parents’ wish and were not very motivated. In the beginning, there were several times when I went to the baseball ground and found nobody there. I therefore worked on making the practice as fun as possible to get the children to come to the ground. I also introduced games such as soccer and playing in the pool in the practices to make it more enjoyable.”

In fact, before Mr. Miyata started his post, the team had no coach, and there were only five members. After Mr. Miyata arrived, however, word spread that his baseball practices with games were fun, and the team soon grew to 25 members.

That is not the only change Mr. Miyata brought to the team. In September 2019, Mr. Miyata led efforts to gather funds and brought nine members of the team between the ages of 11 and 15 to Japan.

One member of the team was a major driver for Mr. Miyata’s efforts. He was Juan David, who had fled to Manaus as a refugee to escape the economic crisis in his home country of Venezuela. Baseball is a national sport in Venezuela, and although he passionately played baseball during his time in Venezuela, he had to give up continuing the sport after immigrating to Manaus. The support of the local Japanese-Brazilians, however, allowed Juan to play baseball once more on the team coached by Mr. Miyata.

Through the support provided by Japanese-Brazilians and the presence of Mr. Miyata as a coach, Juan became interested in Japan and Japanese baseball, and was filled with the desire to visit Japan. However, it was difficult for him to gather the expenses required to visit Japan. At the same time, Juan’s father discovered that he had cancer. Juan strongly wished for his father to see him playing baseball in Japan to encourage his father in his battle against cancer in the hospital.

Having lost his own father to cancer, Mr. Miyata empathized strongly with Juan, and came up with the idea of using crowd funding to cover the expenses required for a trip to Japan. Mr. Miyata also visited local Japanese-Brazilian companies in the area to ask for their support. The children and parents on the team also contributed in collecting funds such as by selling sweets and organizing festivals. As a result of their efforts, the team was able to garner enough funds to send nine children to Japan.

The Manaus Country Club members had numerous precious experiences over the ten days they spent in Japan, including playing a baseball game with a junior-high club team in Fukuoka and watching a live professional game. At the professional baseball game, the staff of the baseball club kindly arranged for the children to meet directly with the players. Also, the Manaus Country Club children visited a Japanese junior-high school and saw Japanese students clean their own classroom and serve lunch, which was a profoundly stimulating experience for them, since there are no such customs in Brazil.

After visiting Japan, the children recounted their experiences by saying, “They were very disciplined,” “I felt happy to be of Japanese descent,” and “There are times when my Japanese-Brazilian grandfather and parents warn me about discipline and manners, and now I understand why after visiting Japan.”

After the Manaus Country Club children returned to Brazil, they invited the parents and supporters of the team for a report of their trip to Japan. The children reported on their experiences in Japan, sharing what Brazilians could learn from the Japanese, such as discipline and manners. The children also planned and started a city cleaning campaign on their own to put the lessons they learned in Japan to practice. The local media has also shown interest in their activities, and the Manaus Country Club is receiving requests for coverage.

Mr. Miyata also feels that the children have changed after their trip to Japan.

“After their trip to Japan, the children are taking baseball more seriously than before, and no one comes late to practice anymore. I think that they have recognized the importance of greetings, discipline, and punctuality from their trip to Japan. I feel the trip has given them an opportunity to learn many lessons that are valuable not just in baseball, but in their future lives when they become adults.”

Mr. Miyata’s assignment as a coach will end in 2020, and he is now working with the team members’ parents to foster a new leader who can carry on the team activities. Mr. Miyata is also searching for a way to become a baseball coach in Brazil. He also has the goal of creating an international team in Japan with his experience in Brazil, and develop global players of the future.

*1 The current name is “Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV)” (name changed due to system revision in the fall of 2018).

*2 The current name is “Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer for Nikkei Communities” (name changed due to system revision in the fall of 2018).