Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida threw out the first pitch for Friday’s World Baseball Classic game between Japan and South Korea, bouncing a ball that was picked up by Japan’s manager Hideki Kuriyama, his designated catcher.
Kishida had the credentials to throw better. He was a high school baseball player and is still a huge fan of his hometown professional baseball team, the Hiroshima Carp.
Kishida used the number 101 because he oversees the 101st Japanese government cabinet in modern history.
His appearance was highly symbolic, indicating improving relations between the two countries that have often been at odds over Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
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Kishida has invited South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to visit Japan next week for what could be the start of a «traveling diplomacy.»
Kishida and Yoon will meet for a summit on strengthening ties, both governments said on Thursday.
On Monday, South Korea announced it would raise local funds to compensate Koreans who won damages in lawsuits against two Japanese companies for their forced labor during colonial rule.
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Kishida took office in October 2021 and enjoyed a high rating of support, achieving little but sparking no controversy, until last summer when powerful former Liberal Democratic Party leader Shinzo Abe was assassinated in July.
Since then, Kishida’s support ratings have plummeted over his handling of his party’s decades-long cozy ties to the South Korean-based Unification Church, revealed after Abe’s death.
As foreign minister, Kishida reached an agreement in 2015 with South Korea to settle the dispute over the issue of «comfort women» who were sexually abused by Japan’s military before and during World War II.
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Part of that legacy still hampers relations between the two neighbors.
Kishida was first elected to parliament in 1993. An advocate of nuclear disarmament, he accompanied former President Barack Obama during his 2016 visit to Hiroshima, the city that was destroyed along with Nagasaki in the US atomic bombings in the final days of World War II. World.