<figure id="attachment_467872" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-467872" style="width: 1014px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="357e9002"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/2660d6ca2c9534dc45ff6f6adc94c5c7.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-467872" class="wp-caption-text">Currently in an epic battle for first place with Yakult.</figcaption></figure>
<h2> I hope you will forgive me.&#8221;</h2>
 Hanshin manager Kyuji Fujikawa, 45, is trying to win back-to-back Central League championships for the first time in the team&#8217;s history. He knows the sour and sweet sides of the popular baseball team where he spent the majority of his career as a player of the first rank, so he is more determined than ever not to let his team get carried away.
 At the spring training camp in February of this year, instead of allowing alumni to enter the field, he announced that there would be &#8220;no chatting.
 Last year, in anticipation of the flood of greetings he would receive in his first year in the post, he went to the trouble of putting up a sign in the main stadium where the camp was held, saying, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to bother you. The team&#8217;s former commentators, whose job it is to find out what the new manager thinks and talk about it in the media, laughed bitterly and said, &#8220;It&#8217;s bad for business. Still, he apologized on the stage after winning the league championship, saying, &#8220;I did it to fight, so I hope you will forgive me. It is a skill of the baseball players that they never fail to take care of their players in this way.
 Fujikawa&#8217;s stance is that he does not let up just because he has achieved results. This year, he has gone even further.
 He has made it clear to the players at spring training camp that there will be no &#8220;small talk&#8221; during the camp. In fact, when Teruaki Sato (27), Shota Morishita (25), and others were approached by an alumnus who has experience as a manager for several Pacific League teams, the manager himself was pulled away from them in a special program on an Osaka TV station.
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 The team has been steadily saving money since the season opener, but after Yakult&#8217;s unexpectedly good performance, manager Fujikawa suddenly came up with his next plan.
 He said, &#8220;Every manager of every team, regardless of whether they have a game or not, will be interviewed by the media. The media surround the manager and talk about a wide range of topics, from the game to chatting with him, but Fujikawa doesn&#8217;t like this. If he does respond, he is cut off after about 20 seconds and can hardly ask any questions. Instead, Fujikawa suggested that they change to a &#8216;press conference format,&#8217; where both sides are seated at a certain distance from each other.
 (A sports newspaper reporter) &#8220;Although there had been some distance coverage of the COVID-19 crisis, it was unusual for the director to take a scalpel to the coverage during a pennant race.
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 Fujikawa understands that it is the manager&#8217;s job to respond to the media, but there are more factors to be written about a traditional baseball team than other teams, and he is concerned that the players and others involved are under a great deal of strain now that the situation is so easily spread on social networking sites. Among them, we are wary of information leaks within the team, dissonance, and reports through guided questioning.
 If the press conference format were to be used, it would be a question-and-answer session, and if the team facilitated the session, they could cut off questions in the middle or not appoint a questioner who might ask unnecessary questions. This is a perfect method to control information while maintaining coverage.
 Although the baseball team has stated that this is a special measure only for the duration of Fujikawa&#8217;s tenure as manager, the media is likely to face an uphill battle.

 Kyodo News

 Hanshin manager Kyuji Fujikawa, who is aiming for back-to-back Central League championships, has begun a new information warfare strategy. What is it?

Hanshin Manager Kyuji Fujikawa proposes to &#8220;abolish the interview&#8221; and &#8220;hold a press conference&#8221; to strengthen the &#8220;war of information&#8221; toward back-to-back Central League championships.

Hanshin Manager Kyuji Fujikawa proposes to “abolish the interview” and “hold a press conference” to strengthen the “war of information” toward back-to-back Central League championships.

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