The long winter and the defeat: The inferiority complex is born

The most popular sport in Japan is still baseball, exemplified by the annual National High School Baseball Championship (Koshien). Every summer, high school teams join this tournament after surviving elimination rounds held in all 47 prefectures.

Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, is covered with snow for almost half the year. Perhaps due to this challenging practice environment, our prefectural representative teams were historically weak, usually losing in the first round of the championship. When I was a kid growing up here, I truly never believed I would live to see the championship flag raised for Hokkaido.

As someone born and raised here, I can say with confidence that many of us carry, more or less, an inferiority complex toward people outside Hokkaido. This likely stems from the fact that this area is often viewed as the “Last Frontier,” or the least-developed region in Japan. We even sometimes refer to the rest of Japan as “the mainland,” a term that people outside Hokkaido rarely use—a phrase that subtly betrays our sense of distance and difference.

The day the shopping mall froze: A collective roar

Then came the miracle. One summer day in 2004, I had just transferred back to Hokkaido from the mainland. I was buying daily necessities for my new home at a shopping mall when the background music abruptly stopped, and the news broke in: A Hokkaido high school team had won the championship.

I will never forget the scene. The shoppers were completely frozen for a moment—a collective pause that seemed to last forever. Then, a massive, primal roar of joy erupted. People shook hands and exchanged high-fives with complete strangers. It was a raw, communal moment of catharsis, proving that the complex was real, and the release was profound.

The mindset shift: From complex to confidence

I believe that collective inferiority complex began to gradually change after that championship victory. The impact of that shift in consciousness seems to have been immense: High school baseball teams from Hokkaido had never won first place in the championship’s long history, dating back to 1915, until 2003. After the historic win in 2004, the victory curse was broken forever. Since then, we have won first place one more time and second place three times.

The shift was not just statistical; it was spiritual. Perhaps the complex never disappeared entirely, but it transformed from a source of shame into a source of humble, grounded pride.

The Hokkaido humility: The craftsman’s open mind

So, how does the collective psychology forged by snow and baseball relate to the furniture we make?

Many of our craftspeople have long experience in woodworking. They are rightly proud of their skills, but they are also consistently flexible and open-minded to new and different ideas. I believe this characteristic differs from the general, stereotypical image of a “stubborn” craftsman who rigidly adheres to his policy or preference.

I would argue that this is a quality born from the humility unique to Hokkaido people—a humility that comes from knowing you are the late bloomer, the underdog, the one who has to work twice as hard in the winter. This grounded, flexible characteristic definitely works to improve the quality of our products, ensuring we are always open to Kaizen. (It turns out, the complex of the frontier might be our greatest asset after all.)

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