Hakone Ekiden (© Monthly Athletics Magazine Japan / Getsuriku)
As Tokyo prepares to host the World Athletics Championships later this year, we take a deep dive into Japan’s passion for road running and how it helped inspire a love for the sport of athletics as a whole.
The second instalment of this four-part series looks at ekiden culture, the national and college road running scene, and the depth of domestic races.
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As the train rattled towards Tokyo, three university graduates – all keen runners – hatched a plan for a long-distance running race to help breed the next batch of marathon runners.
At the forefront of its creation not long after the end of the First World War was Shizo Kanakuri, the father of the marathon in the annals of Japanese athletics.
Last year marked the 100th running of the Hakone Ekiden, a 217km race over 10 legs contested by 20-plus university teams. It begins in central Tokyo and weaves its way to Mount Fuji and back again over two days on 2-3 January.
The big athletic apparel manufacturers design specific kits for the event and the Japanese population laps up its every twist and turn. Last year, it was estimated that nearly half of Japan’s 125 million population tuned in at some point to watch the 12-hour broadcast, making it the second most watched programme on TV annually.
Unheralded 18- to 22-year-olds become overnight sensations, mobbed like rock stars and branded “mountain gods”, their stories pored over in newspapers and on TV shows. For many, it is deemed bigger than the Olympics. For most of its participants, it is the highest accolade of their running careers.
In any ekiden, every runner in each team carries a tasuki or sash, which acts like a relay baton between each leg runner.
Explaining the essence of the event, Takeshi Nishimoto of Ekiden News said: “In Japan, track and field is an extension of physical education classes from school, but ekiden or relays are a spectator sport. The strategies involved, such as who is placed on each leg, or the drama of how young athletes develop and mature in the process, are what make ekidens enjoyable as a spectator.”
While Hakone is the country’s most famous ekiden, which roughly translates as station to station, it is not its first – that one originating in 1917 to mark the 50-year anniversary of the change of capital from Kyoto to Tokyo. And today, they span schools, regions and even companies in Japan, while ekidens have also even branched out overseas.
Hanae Tanaka holds on to anchor the Japanese Collegiate team to its first ever victory at the Chiba Ekiden (© Kazutaka Eguchi/Agence SHOT)
Corporate teams spawned from the end of the Second World War as big businesses tried to both build morale and also a sense of community within them. Now, countless businesses are invested in ekidens, be that as competitive teams and/or sponsors.
Author Adharanand Finn lived in Japan for a time and observed ekidens firsthand, noting: “In Japan, not only winning but being a good team member is important.”
Corporate teams are more than just amateur collectives; in many cases their star runners are provided with a salary, home and all the back-up staff required for their athletic endeavours.
The roster of athletes for some teams have been known to run in excess of 250km each week in preparation for relay competition. Often, it involves getting up at 5am to be able to train before going off for a full day’s work and then training again often late into the night.
Relays have long captured the national attention, even on the track frequently revered over the individual events. And Japan has often punched above its individual weight in them, memorably more recently claiming silver in the men’s 4x100m behind Usain Bolt and the Jamaican team at the 2016 Rio Olympics, when no individual Japanese athlete had made the 100m final.
And relays are paramount within sports in schools, along with mass participation distance races – be that internal or cross-school competitions.
It is over the long distances where Japanese athletes have particularly prospered, with more sub-2:10 marathon runners than any other country in the world. But it is not just at the elite level that it has got into the national psyche. Some 300,000 people apply each year to compete in the Tokyo Marathon, with more than 100 marathons taking place annually in the country.
A convert to the marathon in his 30s is the author Haruki Murakami, who went on to pen a book on what long-distance running means to him – What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
Summing up his own personal love, he said simply: “The point is whether or not I improve over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself.”
Quite whether that was the aim of Kanakuri and his fellow train passengers is another matter, but in the Land of the Rising Sun, the club, college and company distance running scene is thriving.
Matt Majendie for World Athletics
