Korean Japanese in the WBC

This thread may help.

Ogasawara is Japanese and he doesn't even look Korean. Where did you hear that he was Korean?

A lot of Japanese look Korean because their ancestors are (part-)Korean. Trying to determine whether someone looks Korean or Japanese is like trying to determine whether someone looks Swedish or Norwegian.

I'm half Japanese and I have to disagree with you somthing lions. I don't want to get into detail, but my view is that Japanese have differant facial characteristics, same with Koreans and Chinese. I'm not saying I can tell them ALL apart, I'm just saying there is a differance physically.

Well I'm half Japanese too, but that doesn't have much bearing on the conversation. Anyways, maybe Koreans come from a smaller gene pool than the Japanese. I reckon most Koreans can pass as Japanese, but there are many Japanese that can't pass as Korean. That's what you meant, right?

Seriously.

Ogasawara played for Japan in the Olympics, too.

As far as I know, Shukan Gendai ("Weekly Gendai"), that is a Japanese gossip magazine, wrote an article that Shigeo Nagashima couldn't make the Dream Team he promised because of Korean players and steroid before the Athens Olympics. In the content of the article, it was written that one famous player in the Pacific League was Korean-Japanese.

After that article, Korean sports newpaper speculated who the player was. Ogasawara, Kazuo Matsui, and Norihiro Nakamura were written as "maybe Korean-Japanese" because they were famous and played in the Pacific League at that time.

As is often the case with Korean newspaper, famous Japanese athletes are often considered Korean without evidence.

I have a few Korean-Japanese (zainichi Kankokujin) friends here in Japan and they tell me that Kiyohara is part-Korean. Kiyo's grandfather is supposedly Korean. I have heard that Kazuo Matsui is also Korean. There must be a ton of Korean-Japanese in NPB that we just don't know about or hear about since so many of them hide in the closet.

Most of the Korean-Japanese friends I have still use their Korean names although they hardly speak Korean. I know that there's racism in Japanese society against ethnic Koreans, but I think times are changing. I wish more of the ethnic Koreans in NPB would be more open about their ethnicity like the old-school Kyojin players like Harimoto, Nishimoto, Niura, etc. because it's certainly nothing to be ashamed of and I think a majority of Japanese fans would not think any differently about them.

- Shukan Gendai

A bastion of impeccable journalistic principles! Which just happens to regularly find itself on the wrong end of court rulings on demafation cases.

It wouldn't be so bad if Shukan Gendai carried stories with headlines like "Nixon Fathered Child With Space Alien During Watergate Trial" like the Weekly World News, but unfortunately it takes itself seriously.

I might not be reading the post right, but anyone who is a famous Japanese athlete, the Koreans claim they are of Korean decent?

- I might not be reading the post right, but anyone who is a famous Japanese athlete, the Koreans claim they are of Korean decent?

Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Irabu, Hideki Matsui, Senich Hoshino, Hidetoshi Nakata (soccer player), Junichi Inamoto (soccer player), etc.

I found that it was "Sports Seoul" in 2003 that reported Ogasawara and Kazuo Matsui were Korean-Japanese. But this article was already deleted. (Information was from unknown Japanese journalists.)

There are Korean players every team. If they formed a team it would defeat the Korean National team easily.

So I guess if I become a famous Japanese athlete the Koreans will claim me of Korean decent, too, huh? LOL, that's pretty sad.

Takahiro Arai is the only Korean-Japanese on the WBC team I know of. His father's actual last name is Park.

So Arai is Half Korean?