Former Wakayama Junior High School Athletic Grounds Stands

A Concrete Terrace Cut into a Hillside

The Former Wakayama Junior High School Athletic Grounds Stands (旧制和歌山中学校運動場スタンド, Kyūsei Wakayama Chūgakkō Undōjō Sutando), known today as the Toin High School Athletic Grounds Stands, are a reinforced-concrete spectator terrace on the campus of Wakayama Prefectural Toin High School in Fukiage, Wakayama City, completed in November 1922 and entered on Japan's National Register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 4 February 2021.

The terrace runs 156 metres in total, wrapping the northern and eastern edges of the athletic ground that fills the eastern half of the campus. Its builders worked with the land rather than against it, cutting the seating into the slope of the hill that rises behind the school instead of raising a freestanding frame. North of the ground, eleven tiers of concrete sit west of the central staircase and ten to its east. Along the eastern edge the count rises to twelve, with two further staircases dropped into the middle of the run.

Nothing about the construction announces itself. The seats are plain poured concrete, the risers shallow, the surfaces weathered to the colour of old cement.

That plainness is easy to underrate. Permanent concrete seating at a middle school was uncommon in 1922; schools of the period generally made do with a rope line and whatever bank of earth happened to be available. This terrace has held the same edge of the same ground for more than a century, and students still train beneath it.

Two Summers of Baseball, and the Money That Followed

The stands exist because of a baseball team.

In August 1921 the Wakayama Junior High School side travelled to the seventh National Middle School Baseball Championship and won it, closing the final against Kyoto First Commercial School at 16 to 4. A crowd reported to have passed twenty thousand gathered at the Sunanomaru grounds below Wakayama Castle to greet the team. The following August they returned and took the eighth tournament as well.

Two national titles in two years turned a school ground into a civic concern. Wakayama Prefecture and the city of Wakayama both contributed funds, private supporters added more, and by November 1922, three months after the second victory, the concrete terrace was finished. Graduation photographs in the school archive make the change legible at a glance: the class of 1922 posed against open ground, the class of 1923 against tiers of seating.

On 2 December 1922 Crown Prince Hirohito, later the Shōwa Emperor, visited the school. He arrived at 11:53 in the morning, observed a history lesson and an algebra lesson, then went out to the athletic ground, where athletes drawn from middle schools across the prefecture ran a relay race. The afternoon brought a baseball match between the current team and its graduates. School records identify this as the first occasion on which a Japanese crown prince watched a game of baseball.

Essays written by pupils about the visit survive in the school's collection.

The team was not finished. In 1927 it won the fourth National Selected Middle School Baseball Tournament, and the victory carried an invitation to tour the United States, which the players took up that July. After the war, under its new name, Toin High School reached the final of the national summer championship in 1948 and again in 1961.

What Registration Actually Means Here

The terrace carries registration number 30-0290, granted in the ninety-seventh round of registrations announced on 4 February 2021, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Property system operates on a different principle from the better-known Important Cultural Property designation. Instead of freezing a structure in place, it recognises buildings and works roughly fifty years old or older, asks owners to keep using them, and requires notification before major alteration. The category suits a school. Nothing here has been fenced off or converted into an exhibit, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the structure with a note of later Shōwa-period repair.

Wakayama Prefecture owns the terrace along with the campus. According to local reporting at the time of the registration, the school had originally prepared an application for the old library building alone; when the principal mentioned that the terrace was approaching its ninety-ninth year, the Agency's officer suggested submitting both, and the two structures were registered on the same day.

Seeing the Stands

Toin High School is an operating school, not a museum, and the athletic ground is in daily use. Casual entry during term time is not possible. Anyone wanting to see the terrace at close range should contact the school office beforehand and explain the purpose of the visit; a research or heritage interest carries more weight than an unannounced arrival at the gate.

There is something to see without going in. A panel marking the registration was fixed to the brick wall south of the main gate in February 2021, and three explanatory boards, one each for the stands, the old library and the Nomura Kichisaburō inscription monument, were unveiled on campus the following month.

Photography from the public street is unrestricted. Photography inside the grounds needs permission, and shots including students should be avoided.

Access is straightforward. Take a Wakayama Bus service from either JR Wakayama Station or Nankai Wakayamashi Station, alight at Komatsubara 5-chōme, and walk about five minutes east. The campus sits near the centre of the city, close to Wakayama Castle, the Wakayama Prefectural Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, so the terrace fits into a half-day of walking rather than demanding a trip of its own.

The old school library, registered on the same day and standing on the northern side of the same campus, is a short walk from the ground.