Hiromi Taniguchi in the marathon at the 1991 World Championships (© Getty Images)
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 third instalment of this four-part series looks at Japan's marathon successes on the international stage.
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In front his home crowd, Japan’s Hiromi Taniguchi became a national hero when he won marathon gold at the 1991 World Championships, paving the way for a raft of marathon champions from the Land of the Rising Sun.
A hundred days out from the marathon at the World Championships in Tokyo in 1991, Hiromi Taniguchi started a journal.
Winner of both the London Marathon and his home race in Tokyo – achieving both victories in 1987 – he was already an internationally renowned marathon runner. Day after day, he penned nuggets about his training, nutrition, dealing with the extreme heat and tactics to employ kilometre by kilometre come race day.
Expectation on his shoulders from the wider public was low to the extent that even Taniguchi was surprised when he got the call-up by selectors having finished a relatively lowly ninth in that year’s Tokyo Marathon.
Japanese marathon runner Hiromi Taniguchi (© Getty Images)
At that point, he was 31 and at a crossroads in his career about whether to continue competing but opted to target the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 using his home World Championships as a stepping stone of sorts.
In the build-up, he pored over video tapes of his past races to extricate whatever information he could. A university professor following his running career, he compiled all the data he could and transferred it into a race plan, which included an uphill kick at the 38km mark.
As others wilted in the extreme heat on race day, it was that kick which catapulted him to the victory, a first gold for his country at the championships.
He later admitted his inspiration had been two-fold: watching national teammate Sachiko Yamashita taking the silver in the women’s marathon and Carl Lewis’ world record of 9.86 in the 100m.
He said: “When Yamashita-san won the silver medal… I went to practice thinking that the only thing left to do now was win the gold medal. At the time, people said there was no way a Japanese could win.”
On his home streets, in what was his 13th marathon… a case of lucky for some.
No Japanese man has ever won the World Championships marathon since then but there’s no shortage of compatriots who have followed in Taniguchi’s footsteps on the grander global stages.
The first Japanese woman to win a world title for her country in track and field was Junko Asari, who was just 24 years old when she entered the marathon at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany.
She had won just one race over 26.2miles previously, the Osaka Ladies Marathon earlier in 1993, but in Stuttgart she won by nearly a minute from Portugal’s Manuela Machado with Asari’s compatriot Tomoe Abe also joining her on the podium with the bronze.
Junko Asari in the marathon at the 1993 World Championships (© Getty Images)
That success was followed at the World Championships just four years later when Hiromi Suzuki brought home gold.
Their mantle was taken up by Naoko Takahashi, the daughter of a kindergarten headteacher who began athletics at high school where she shone at middle distance before making the move to the marathon in the late 1990s.
She set a national record of 2:25:48 in just her second marathon, then set an Asian record of 2:21:47 in her next race over the distance. She later became the first sub-2:20 runner in winning the 2001 Berlin Marathon, beating her closest challenger by more than seven minutes.
Naoko Takahashi winning the 2000 Olympic marathon title (© Getty Images)
Hers was a career of dual glory with her sealing Olympic gold at the Sydney Games a year earlier, setting an Olympic record in the process. In retirement, she became a sports presenter as well as commentator.
There was another Japanese win at the Olympic marathon four years later in Athens courtesy of Mizuki Noguchi. Edged into second by Kenya’s Catherine Ndereba at the 2003 World Championships, Noguchi turned the tables a year on.
In searing heat in the Greek capital, she found herself in the leading pack early on and made her move at about the 25km mark. As the Japanese athlete tired in the latter stages, Ndereba closed the gap but not sufficiently to catch her rival, who was still 12 seconds clear at the finishing line.
It is not just the women to have shone since Taniguchi’s breakthrough. While Olympic and world titles have eluded the men since, there have been winners of the big global marathons.
Masakazu Fujiwara won the Tokyo Marathon in 2010 before compatriot Noriko Higuchi took the women’s title the following year.
And Yuki Kawauchi won in Boston just seven years ago. He also holds the world record for becoming the first person in history to run more than 100 sub-2:20 marathons. And aged 38, he was still running marathons in Kasumigaura and Vancouver earlier this year.
Matt Majendie for World Athletics
