Source: Hanshin Tigers History and Treasures

Seizo Misaki (三崎省三) was born in Hyogo Prefecture on July 23, 1867. After graduating from school in Japan, he headed to America, where he lived for 8 years while studying electrical engineering at Stanford University and Purdue University. He became enamored with college sports, and was impressed with the size of the football players and stadiums. It was then that he first dreamt of building a similar stadium in Japan, where young athletes could train and develop bodies that could compare with those of their American counterparts. 

Misaki returned to Japan in 1894 and worked for Kyoto Electric Railways, helping design railway systems for Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Just months after Hanshin Railway was formed in 1899, Misaki was named chief executive officer. In August of that same year, he spent 9 months in America, traversing the nation and visiting 27 cities in an attempt to better understand inter-city transportation systems. It was during this visit that he also checked out major league baseball parks and envisioned baseball flourishing in Japan as well. He made note of the architecture of various stadiums during this trip.

In 1910, a baseball team visited Japan from Chicago. While looking for a stadium in the Kansai area to host a game, Mainichi Newspaper brought the idea to Hanshin Railways. Misaki hastily designed an idea for a ballpark, and in just weeks, it was built in the Koroen area (currently 3 stations west of Koshien on the Hanshin line). It was very rough and did not receive good reviews, leaving Misaki feeling rather despondent. He desired to build a grander stadium than that.

Five years after this, Japan started what is now known as the Summer Koshien tournament (though it did not yet have this name attached to it). From 1915, it was played in Toyonaka (Osaka) at a ballpark adjacent to the Hankyu Railway. The ballpark was much too small for the popularity it started to experience, and by 1917, Hanshin Electric built a bigger ballpark within the grounds of Naruo Racecourse. The tournament was subsequently held in this milieu.

However, during the summer tournament of 1923, the semi-finals featured a game between two local teams: Koyo Middle School (now Koyo Gakuin High) and Ritsumeikan Middle School. The crowd was so large that they spilled onto the playing field and the game had to be delayed by over an hour. A telegram was sent to a Hanshin employee, Shigeru Maruyama, who was abroad in America. “Naruo has imploded. Bring back blueprints of American stadiums.”

Misaki delegated one of his new employees, the young and talented Seizo Noda, to design a new stadium to be built on newly-acquired land for Hanshin Electric, “and I want it to be in the same league as the new Yankee Stadium.” Misaki encouraged him, saying, “Having just gotten out of university in America at age 28, I designed the Kyoto railway system by myself. I’m Seizo and so are you. There’s nothing impossible for a Seizo to accomplish.”

Misaki told Noda that there was no time for him to actually go see Yankee Stadium for himself, and their telegram request to obtain a copy of the stadium’s blueprints went unanswered. So armed with just the blueprints of New York’s Polo Grounds (brought back from America by Maruyama) and their imaginations, they set forth to build the largest stadium (at the time) in the Orient. The designs were officially approved on November 28, and construction started soon thereafter.

With the stadium scheduled to be completed in 1924, the name of the stadium needed to be decided fairly quickly. It was the combination of the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly stems, known as the sexagenary cycle that inspired the name Koshien. The Chinese had used this cycle to record years for millennia and it is said to have come to Japan in the sixth century AD. The year 1924 was the intersection of the heavenly stem 甲 (kinoe) and the earthly stem 子 (ne). Read in conjunction in standard Japanese style, and combined with the kanji 園 (garden), it became known as Koshien. 

The stadium was completed in July 1924 and its unveiling took place on August 1 at 7 am. Naturally, the two Seizos (Misaki and Noda) were in attendance, as were elementary school students from 150 schools located along the Hanshin railway line, plus their parents, and others. Total attendance was approximately 10,000.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this Koshien Grand Athletic Ground is the largest of its kind in the Orient. I have a dream to make it the mecca of Japanese sports.”

The two annual national high school baseball championships take place at this stadium every year (spring and summer), and has captured the minds and hearts of the entire country for nearly a century since that August morning. Misaki has indeed accomplished his mission, and then some.