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The story
Ryukoku University’s baseball team has been handed a one-month suspension over violence against underclassmen, theft of money and underwear, and the in-dorm sharing of videos showing players defecating in a river. It later emerged that new violence occurred even after an earlier incident came to light in 2025 and preventive measures were supposedly put in place. On 5ch, users criticized the leniency of the punishment — with comments like “banning outside games is basically the standard move for baseball scandals now” — and questioned whether the organization has a culture that keeps problems from reaching those at the top.
Ryukoku University Baseball Team Suspended — “What Happened?” The Truth Behind the Violence, Theft Cover-up, and Inappropriate Videos – coki (Koki)
2026.08.27
What exactly was going on inside Ryukoku University’s baseball team? Punching and kicking underclassmen. A string of thefts in the dorm — money and underwear — with more than 20 victims. And videos of players defecating in a river, shared among the team in the dorm. What’s more, new violence occurred even after an earlier incident came to light in 2025 and preventive measures were put in place. At a storied program with 29 championships in the Kansai Big Six Baseball League, why couldn’t the problems be stopped?
Source: coki.jp / Original article here
What people said
Scat-fetish baseball players or something…
If you don't like it, don't play
Sounds like Yakult's Hongo Hiroki is the coach now
Maybe the team's gone off the rails because it's all Yakult connections?
Former Yakult player Furuno Masato arrested on the spot for drunk driving after hitting two oncoming cars — "We will respond strictly per our rules," team says; he's been a Ryukoku baseball coach since 2025
https://hochi.news/articles/20260318-OHT1T51467.html?page=1
They pulled all this and still only got a 1-month ban that dodges the league games…
Well, troublemakers turn up everywhere I guess
That's the real charm of "yakyu" (baseball, using the mocking slang term)
Japan's club culture is seriously broken, needs to be torn down and rebuilt
You really think stuff like this doesn't happen in America??
A hard wooden bat smashes into your head and kills you
Hard rock-like projectiles are constantly flying around, even hitting spectators
This is straight-up criminal
A 1-month suspension is way too lenient, garbage university
http://hayabusa9.5ch.net/test/read.cgi/mnewsplus/1587801801/
You're literally acting like pigs
There's usually a reason things don't get reported up the chain, though
Telling the higher-ups is pointless, it just makes things more of a hassle once it does get reported, and when the higher-ups get involved it ends up worse for the victim
Happens all the time
Same thing happens in court cases
They cook up some vague, nitpicky logic
And it ends up not making sense
>"Even after violence came to light in 2025 and prevention measures were put in place, new violence occurred"
The conclusion's already clear: it's not working
Fitting for a Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha university — they've really taken the "even the wicked are saved" teaching (akunin shoki) to heart
Truly rotten to the core
The fact that neither baseball insiders nor fans treat this as a problem tells you everything about where they're coming from
Name the river already
It'll be too disgusting to use after this
If it's Shiga, it all comes back around eventually
Everyone in Kansai's drinking that water anyway
Bit late to worry about it now, no?
What are you even gonna do with a pile of stolen guys' underwear?
You know exactly what you're implying, lol
The players at these baseball-focused schools probably think "if we didn't play, the school would go under"
If you're talking Tokyo equivalent
It's Komazawa University
Six of one, half a dozen of the other, but I'd say Kokugakuin over "Idiot Komazawa" (Ahokoma)
Need to blow this up bigger or these guys will never reflect on what they did
Do that and you'll get bullied and benched
Background and Key Points
Ryukoku University in Kyoto is a Jōdo Shinshū Hongan-ji-ha (Shin Buddhist) institution, and its baseball team competes in the Kansai Big Six Baseball League, one of Japan’s older regional collegiate leagues, with 29 titles to its name. That history matters because Japanese university sports scandals are almost never punished by outside authorities disbanding the club; instead the school or team imposes its own penalty, typically a temporary halt to “taigai shiai” (games against outside opponents) during the off-season, while league play itself continues largely untouched. That is the specific practice posters mean when they call a one-month ban the “standard playbook” — it looks severe on paper but rarely threatens a team’s standing.
The thread’s real disagreement isn’t over whether the punishment was light — that’s close to consensus — but over what the recurrence means. Some posters treat violence and hazing as baseball’s cultural default, an “unless you like it, don’t play” inevitability, while others (post 38) push back on treating this as uniquely Japanese. A sharper split appears around the internal-reporting question: rather than agreeing that better reporting channels would fix things, several posters argue reporting incidents upward actively backfires on victims, making it a systemic disincentive rather than a solution.
What outsiders may miss is that “suspension” here is a self-imposed, limited sanction, not expulsion from the league or program shutdown — a distinction that explains why frustration in the thread centers on leniency rather than on the team’s survival. The joking reference to “akunin shōki” also assumes familiarity with a specific Shin Buddhist doctrine about salvation for wrongdoers, not generic religious mockery.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Kansai] Ryukoku University Baseball Team Suspended — “What Happened?” The Truth Behind the Violence, Theft Cover-up, and Inappropriate Videos.”
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