Baseball fans are beginning to know that Shohei Ohtani and other major leaguers utilize a wide variety of data and technology, but how is NPB implementing this? We asked Seibu Lions officials and players about “realistic ways to use it.” (The 2nd and 3rd episodes of all 3 episodes are also being distributed)
A few years ago, I was interviewing Associate Professor Takashi Kawamura of the University of Tsukuba, who is a leading researcher in the biomechanics of baseball and heads a coaching research laboratory. Kawamura’s students included great baseball players such as Rihito Yoshii, Koichi Oshima, and Toshihisa Hitoshi, but he also had many young graduate students.
Today, they are expanding their career paths by becoming managers at sports-related companies and developers at manufacturers. One of the graduate students who was by far the biggest and of few words was Hakushin Liu. She was an exchange student from China, and at that time it seemed like she would still have difficulty communicating in Japanese.
Beijing Olympics → Interested in high school baseball and decided to study abroad
When I interviewed Mr. Liu, who is now in charge of biomechanics for the Seibu Lions, I was surprised to find that he spoke fluent Japanese. Why did Liu, who was born in China, become interested in baseball in the first place?
“In 2008, when I was in my third year of high school, there was the Beijing Olympics, and I was exposed to the sport of baseball for the first time.I also started watching Japanese high school baseball and MLB games.I went to university at Shandong Sports Academy in Shandong Province. I went on to learn about physical education.
I also obtained a teaching license in China and joined an amateur baseball team because I was interested in baseball, but I really wanted to study baseball at graduate school, so I decided to study abroad after consulting with my parents. If I wanted to learn baseball, my only options were Japan or America, but since I had always been interested in Japanese baseball, I decided to study abroad in Japan. I knew Professor Kawamura’s name from the internet, and my Chinese seniors told me that he was a great teacher.”
From there, my first life in Japan began. At first, she couldn’t understand Japanese very well, which made it difficult for her.
“I learned about biomechanics in Professor Kawamura’s laboratory, but since I majored in physical education in China, I didn’t know much about specialized motion analysis, so I studied Japanese and biomechanics from scratch. It took two years.”
After being a “jack of all trades” in the independent league
The last time a baseball competition was held at the Olympics was in Beijing in 2008 (it will make a limited comeback at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics). By the time Liu went to Japan to study, baseball fever in China must have been on the decline, but what did he think about his future after completing graduate school?
2024-01-05 08:32:15
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