An official at the Osaka Prefecture Junior High School Athletic Federation botched the entry procedure for a national track and field meet, leaving eight junior high and high school students from Osaka unable to compete. The registration window ran for roughly a month, from noon on August 21 to 6:00 PM on September 24, but the official reportedly didn’t know entries could be changed or canceled after submission, and also misunderstood the deadline itself. Toru Hashimoto, former governor of Osaka Prefecture and now a lawyer, argued on a TV program that “adults’ mistakes shouldn’t be visited on the children — starting next year, the rules should be changed so kids can still compete even if the same kind of mistake happens.” On 5ch, opinions split between sympathy for the students and more cautious voices arguing that “they should figure out how to prevent the mistake in the first place” or “if you allow exceptions, there’s no end to it,” with reactions to Hashimoto’s comments similarly divided.
Toru Hashimoto proposes on the “8 Osaka junior high/high school students can’t compete at nationals due to an entry mistake” issue: “Don’t let adults’ mistakes fall on the kids. Starting next year, the rules should be changed so children can still compete even after the same kind of mistake.”
Due to an entry error by the Osaka Prefecture Junior High School Athletic Federation’s track and field division (“Osaka Chutairen”), eight junior high and high school students from Osaka have been barred from competing in the national track and field championships.
On Kansai TV’s program “Shunkan LIVE Toretate!,” former Osaka governor and lawyer Toru Hashimoto laid out his view: “Don’t let the kids pay for adults’ mistakes. Adults’ mistakes should be penalized on the adults.”
This is only blowing up because it's Osaka. The athletics federation's response wasn't wrong.
15AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:41
Can't Yoshimura (Osaka's governor) at least say something like 'let them compete and I'll resign as governor instead'? Don't just gripe from a safe distance — sacrifice yourself and actually help these kids out.
32AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:46
Re: #15 Using your position to bend the rules like that would be a huge problem.
19AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:41
Once you can just chalk it up to 'an adult's mistake,' anything goes, huh.
96AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:58
Re: #19 Exactly. I mean, who else but an adult was ever going to be the one making this mistake anyway?
22AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:43
I was on my high school track team, and once the relay roster didn't get submitted in time on meet day, so I couldn't race. Of all times, it was my final meet as a third-year.
27AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:44
Re: #22 LOL, dragged down by a useless jock of a teacher.
31AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:45
How exactly would they even change it? Let people enter after the deadline with a politician's recommendation or something?
46AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:49
Re: #31 Registering after the deadline should cost money — make the ones who neglected to register pay 10,000 yen (about $65) each.
49AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:50
They'd submitted their entry one minute before the deadline.
69AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:53
Re: #49 If that were true it would've gone through. The login itself happened one minute before (lol) — the screen just changed right after and that was it.
51AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:50
They should just let the athletes enter themselves instead of going through the school. That way, if there's a mistake, it's on them.
73AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:54
Re: #51 From what I gather, athletes who've already cleared the qualifying standard get entered through their school and can compete as normal. But athletes who, say, won some other competition get entered by the junior high athletic federation instead, and that's apparently where the mistake happened this time. (This came up in Google's AI search mode though, so it might not be accurate.)
61AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:52
Normally you'd think they'd focus on a system that prevents the mistake in the first place, no?
70AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:53
Re: #61 Exactly. But instead, they're glossing over the federation's own mistake and using it as a springboard to push for a rule change.
67AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:53
"I finally managed to log in at 5:59:13 PM (on September 24). Since the event was being held in Mie Prefecture, I searched using 'Mie Prefecture' as my keyword, but I had trouble finding the right page and ended up on the U18 meet's page by mistake — that's when I realized the error. After that I rushed to find the information page for the U16 meet entry and logged in, but by the time I got in it was 6:00:01 PM, and the entry button was no longer there."
74AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:54
Re: #67 So the 'one minute before' thing was actually for a different competition?
76AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:55
It wasn't the school that made the mistake, it was the junior high athletic federation — so they should just let the kids compete as normal. This whole situation is so dumb.
88AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:57
Re: #76 Right. The school didn't mess anything up.
78AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:55
The fault here lies entirely with the school to begin with, so if anything should be fixed first, it's how the school handles meet entries. Talk of changing the rules should come after that.
85AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:57
Re: #78 It's not even the school — it's the Osaka junior high athletic federation.
84AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:57
I looked it up — the entry period for this meet ran from 12:00 PM on August 21 to 6:00 PM on September 24. With that much time to work with, forgetting to enter is just dumb.
99AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:59
Re: #84 The staff member made two mistakes: they forgot that entries could be changed or canceled after submission, and they got the deadline date wrong. If they'd just done a provisional registration back on August 21, none of this would've happened.
90AnonymousOct 8, 2026 18:57
Why not just charge a hefty extra registration fee and let them in?
120AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:03
Re: #90 The tricky part is the entries are already locked in — adding the Osaka athletes would bump other athletes out. For the 100m, only 48 can compete, so adding the Osaka athletes would mean knocking out the 48th-place athlete from Okayama.
Old people's rigidity is seriously scary. They're so shackled by rules, regulations, and compliance that it's warped their minds. If you've got no flexibility, you're basically worthless as a human being.
122AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:03
Re: #111 If you flexibly think through all the different scenarios, you end up concluding that this kind of self-serving exception shouldn't be allowed. Thinking 'poor kids!' and stopping there is the shallow, closed-minded take.
116AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:02
I know someone whose coach botched the application and they couldn't compete at nationals because of it. They found out on-site. It's been three or four years now, but it clearly still looks like serious trauma for them.
124AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:04
Re: #116 Ugh, finding out on-site must have been brutal. That's really rough. All you can do is hope a lot of good things come their way…
126AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:04
Then just have the students apply for themselves.
[Picture the] coach: "Oops, I forgot to submit the whole batch…"
135AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:07
Re: #126 I think that'd be fine honestly. Teachers forgetting to submit things happens every year even with high school entrance exam applications.
130AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:06
Schools are so strict about students being late, yet here the adults can't even make a deadline. When I once used 'Wicky-san got me' as my excuse for being late (a reference to a TV prank/urban-legend character used as a jokey alibi), they absolutely lost it at me.
136AnonymousOct 8, 2026 19:07
Re: #130 The school isn't actually the one at fault here, though.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The core issue here isn’t a mistake by the schools, but a procedural oversight by a staff member at the Osaka Prefecture Junior High School Athletic Federation, which organizes the meet. The entry window ran for over a month, from noon on August 21 to 6:00 PM on September 24, so this wasn’t a simple case of forgetting — it came down to two overlapping errors: not realizing entries could be changed or canceled after submission, and misjudging the deadline time itself. Where opinions split on the thread was over whether Toru Hashimoto’s proposed rule change — that “adults’ mistakes shouldn’t disadvantage children” — was the right call, with sympathy for the students on one side and caution that “allowing exceptions would make things unmanageable” on the other. It’s also worth noting, and easy to miss, that the competition slots are capped, so adding the Osaka athletes could mean bumping athletes from another prefecture out entirely — meaning simply expanding the field isn’t a straightforward fix given the meet’s structural limits.
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