Hakodate set to host world molkky pin-throwing contest

By ICHIRO NODA/ Staff Writer

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TV program director Tadahisa Fujimura, center background, throws a molkky in Toi Water Park in Hakodate, Hokkaido, on June 16. Hakodate Mayor Jun Oizumi, left background, looks on. (Ichiro Noda)

HAKODATE, Hokkaido—It’s like bowling with a stick. Molkky is a team sport of Finnish origin in which a wooden pin is gently tossed at skittles.

Each throw produces a score depending on how many pins are knocked down.

Molkky can be played by most anyone because it has simple rules and is not physically demanding.

The city of Hakodate in Hokkaido will host a world Molkky championship from Aug. 23 to 25, the first time the tournament has taken place outside Europe.

Competing in the Hakodate event will be a record 3,300 or so individuals from 672 teams, including 45 teams from 14 countries and regions outside Japan.

“I hope the world championship will help molkky spread further and take root (in Japan),” said Shuichi Yatsuga, a doctor who helped to bring the sport to Japan. “In the coming years, I hope to focus on spreading the sport in the domain of welfare.”

The sport involves throwing a 23-by-6 centimeter pin known as a molkky.

SIMPLE RULES

The players throw the molkky at a set of 12 other pins, which are known as skittles. The skittles stand 3 to 4 meters away.

Players can hold the molkky any way they like but must throw it underarm.

Scoring is simple. Each skittle bears a numeral, from one to 12. When a thrower knocks down only one skittle, the score is the numeral on it. When two or more skittles fall, the score is the number of skittles fallen, not the digits they bear.

The skittles are grouped together at first. As teams throw and skittles fall, they are set upright again wherever they come to rest.

The scores are added, and a team that first obtains exactly 50 points becomes the winner.

CELEBRITY PLAYERS

On one recent day in June, a campground in Hakodate was seen hosting a camping event for “Suiyo Dodesho” (How Do You Like Wednesday?), a popular variety program produced by Hokkaido Television Broadcasting Co., or HTB.

A game of molkky was under way, with celebrity players.

Tadahisa Fujimura, the program’s chief director, led Team HTB. Another team comprised Hakodate city officials, including Hakodate Mayor Jun Oizumi, the older brother of “Suiyo Dodesho” personality Yo Oizumi.

Fujimura first became familiar with molkky in May last year, when he took part in an exhibition game during a national tournament organized by the Japan Molkky Association.

“I thought it’d be a piece of cake, but I ended up being so tense during the game that nothing went right for me,” Fujimura said. “I became really hooked on molkky when I bought its tools and got into playing it.”

Team HTB will compete in the world championship in August.

Fujimura, who turns 60 next year, said of the charms of molkky: “As someone who started out at this age, I still have a chance of beating young people, and I am even competing in a world championship. There is no other sport like that.”

EVANGELISTS OF THE GAME

Behind Hakodate’s successful bid to host the world championship were the efforts of a married couple who are working to spread molkky in Japan.

Shuichi, 51, and Chiho Yatsuga, 49, are physicians at Hakodate Goryoukaku Hospital.

Shuichi played molkky for the first time in summer 2008, when he was living in Finland. He had taken leave from Kurume University Hospital in Fukuoka Prefecture and was studying at the University of Helsinki. His introduction to molkky was in a park with colleagues from his lab.

“That’s a fixed pastime of summer,” he said. “The Finnish way to play the sport is to play it in a laid-back manner over a barbecue or beer.”

Shuichi organized a team for the molkky world championship in Finland in 2010. Also on the team were Chiho and fellow Japanese students.

It was the first time Japanese players had taken part. But they did not progress far as the team suffered a crushing defeat during the second round.

“Since my high school days, I had never been so bitterly disappointed as I was at the time,” Shuichi said.

His team continued to practice molkky every week in a rented indoor practice field during the winter, but when it competed in the 2011 championship, it lost in the second round again.

Shuichi and Chiho were hooked, however. They decided to help molkky spread in Japan.

When they returned to Japan in autumn 2011, they brought with them 30 molkky sets. They set up the JMA with fellow medical workers.

To begin with, they organized a practice session in Tokyo. They approached people whose work had a Finnish connection.

The JMA organized its first official championship in Tokyo in 2014.

A turning point came in 2019, when Tetsuya Morita, a member of the comedy duo Saraba Seishun no Hikari (Farewell to the light of youth), took part in a molkky practice session and spoke about it on YouTube and elsewhere.

That prompted a sharp rise in the number of participants in official JMA championships.

WINNING BID

From the start, the JMA sought to bring the world championship to Japan. It was one of the association’s founding goals.

Shuichi and Chiho landed jobs in Hakodate in autumn 2019. They began preparing to host the tournament.

Chiho made a speech at a meeting of the International Molkky Organization in 2022. She stressed the significance of holding the world championship in Japan.

She spoke of the charms of Hakodate, including the city’s culinary pleasures and the nocturnal views from Mount Hakodateyama.

The speech tipped the decision in Hakodate’s favor. It beat out a rival venue in France.

The Molkky World Championship 2024 will be the 19th such tournament. The first took place in 2004.

Previous tournaments have been held in Finland, France and the Czech Republic.