Abstract
This article sets out to make an analysis concerning the relationship between the discourses on ‘youthfulness’ and ‘purity’, and thereby to clarify the formulation of images on the Koshien Baseball Tournaments in those days.
‘Purity’ was the term which was frequently used in the discourses on the Koshien Baseball Tournaments from the 1920s through the 1930s. At first, it didn’t quite represent exactly what the events were. This is because the newspapers which promoted the events ranked it as ‘slogan’ that players and concerned parties of the events had to abide by to the possible extent. However, after the middle of the 1920s, in the course of arguments on the events, the term began to be reinterpreted which could represent a unique appeal of the events the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League might not. As a result, the series of the ‘narratives’ depicting the events all of which had ‘purity’ in their core were generated.
The following viewpoints could be pointed out. ‘Youthfulness’ as ‘norm’ that the baseball circle during the end of the Meiji Era established for survival was the indispensable conditions precedent to conducting the events in the early stages. And in contrast to growing criticism toward ever-growing commercialism of the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League, the way of viewing the Koshien Baseball Tournaments as ‘others’ able to rightly embody ‘youthfulness’ began to be established.
