Panasonic has appointed a female manager, a rare sight for a corporate baseball team, this season, and has taken a step forward in a “male-dominated society” that is not bound by gender. The reporter, who was a manager of the baseball team in high school, is hopeful that by carving out a new path, the team will be able to see the issues and make improvements, creating a virtuous cycle.

“I somehow thought of it as something that only men did. But I realized that in other jobs you don’t get the time to feel happy or sad about every pitch.”

Moeka Furumoto (22), who graduated from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Nihon University and joined Panasonic as manager of the baseball team, talks about the rewards of her job:

In May and June, he sat on the bench and kept score in the second qualifying round of the Intercity Kinki Tournament, with a serious look on his face. Although the team missed out on the main tournament, he not only supported his team, but also helped run the tournament by serving as the official scorer.

Furumoto is from Tokyo. She loves to be physically active, and started playing softball in junior high school, which she continued at Nihon University Toyoyama Girls’ High School in Tokyo. Nihon University, where she went on to study, did not have a women’s softball club, so she joined the baseball club as a manager, saying, “I wanted to train myself in a tough environment.”

Many high school and college teams have female managers, but in amateur baseball, retired players often take on the role of manager, and it is rare for a corporate team to employ a female manager.

After graduating from university, Furumoto had no plans to continue as a manager and began job hunting with the goal of becoming an engineer at a company, but then she found out that Panasonic was looking for a female manager.