Okinawa launches esports high school
A new esports high school in Okinawa is going viral for sending students to international exchanges and showing promise as a feeder into competitive circuits, with the announcement racketing up 56,000 likes on social media. (x.com)
Okinawa now has an esports-focused high school support campus in Naha, and its first entrance ceremony was held on April 9 with 11 new students. (youtube.com) The school, TSUNABeeeeee! esports High School, says it is Okinawa’s first correspondence-school support campus built specifically around esports. It is based on the seventh floor of Palette Kumoji, a commercial complex next to Kencho-mae Station in central Naha. (tsunabeeeeee-eshs.com) A July 25, 2025 joint announcement by Okinawa Global High School and Okinawa Cellular Telephone said the campus would open in April 2026 after the two groups formed a business partnership. The release said the project would use Okinawa Cellular’s new “eStyleNAHA TSUNABeeeeee!” entertainment facility as its base. (okinawa-cellular.jp) The school is not a standard full-time public high school. It is a support campus for students in Japan’s correspondence high school system, which lets students work toward a regular high school diploma with more flexible schedules and in-person support. (okinawa-cellular.jp) That structure helps explain the pitch. The school’s website says students can study esports while also working toward a high school graduation credential, with classes in digital skills, English, and career development alongside game training. (tsunabeeeeee-eshs.com) The curriculum is built around three esports tracks in the first-person shooter and third-person shooter genres, plus lessons in information technology and artificial intelligence tools. Okinawa news outlet OTV said students will also study programming and internet literacy over a three-year course. (tsunabeeeeee-eshs.com, youtube.com) English is a selling point because competitive gaming is inherently cross-border: teams scrim online, tournaments run internationally, and players spend hours communicating with people outside Japan. The school says it uses Okinawa Global High School’s existing English program for esports-themed conversation classes. (tsunabeeeeee-eshs.com, okinawagh.jp) Okinawa already had a local high school esports federation before this campus opened. The Okinawa branch of the Japan High School Esports Federation says it supports the growth of high school esports in the prefecture and helps schools launch clubs and events. (esportsokinawa.com) The prefecture has also hosted school-age international competition before. The Department of Defense Education Activity said Kadena Air Base in Okinawa hosted its Far East esports championship from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, 2025, with 11 teams from Pacific-region high schools and one international school. (dodea.edu) At the April 9 ceremony, one new student told OTV he wanted to learn from people working in the game industry and eventually make games played “all over the world.” For a school built around online competition, English, and digital production, that ambition is exactly the product being sold. (youtube.com)
