Two Sundays ago, 5th December, the 75th Fukuoka marathon was staged. It was the final edition of the race. It was a sad day indeed for athletic aficionados, as it marked, the end of an era.
Fukuoka is one of the largest cities in Japan, and its seaport has acted as a gateway to the country since ancient times. It is famous for hosting the Mitama Festival, where over 6,000 lanterns are lit to the rhythm of taiko drumming to welcome the spirits of the dead and for the Japanese delicacy fugu, or blowfish, which is so lethally poisonous that one tiny error in its preparation can lead to the consumer’s death. Then, there is, now was, its world famous Fukuoka Marathon.
During post World War II reconstruction, a Japanese national newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, organized and sponsored the Kanaguri Prize Asahi Marathon which was held in Kumamoto, in 1947. In the initial years, the race venue was rotated, before going to Fukuoka for the first time in 1951. In 1954, it became the first race in Japan to invite foreign runners to participate and was renamed the Asahi International Marathon. Beginning in 1959 (except in 1963 when the race was shifted to Tokyo to test the course for the following year’s Summer Olympics) the race was hosted by Fukuoka. In 1966, the race was once again renamed the International Marathon Championship, as it continued to gain international recognition. In 1974, it was rechristened the Fukuoka International Open Marathon Championship.
In the 1960s, despite Abebe Bikila’s two Olympic marathon titles (1960 and 1964), in the main, the event was dominated by a group of runners from Japan and Great Britain.
In 1965 Japanese men ran ten of the eleven fastest marathon times for the year. The following year they ran fifteen of the top seventeen. Unlike today, marathons were few and far between, and participants were relatively few in number. There was Boston, which celebrated its 125th anniversary this year, the Kosice in Slovakia, the second oldest, which was initiated in 1924, the Twente in the Netherlands, the London Marathon, and the Lake Biwa Marathon founded in 1946, the oldest Japanese marathon.
However, before the advent of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Championships in 1983, it was Fukuoka which bore the mantle of the unofficial world marathon championship. Scheduled annually for the first Sunday in December, the race had evolved into an elite men’s race featuring the best Japanese runners and specially selected foreigners. A runner only really came of age as a marathoner when he received an invite to race at Fukuoka. The course is fast: flat, curve-less and smooth. The weather conditions, more often than not, are perfect for marathon racing, and the thousands of Japanese fans (not forgetting the millions watching on television) lining the route and screaming words of encouragement, made it the ideal setting.
Observers, particularly American ones, like to point to American Frank Shorter’s 1972 Olympic marathon victory as the catalyst for the running boom, and the subsequent explosion in shoes and running apparel sales. It may well be true, but the seeds were actually sown at Fukuoka. After winning the 1971 PanAm Games Marathon in the pedestrian time of two hours, twenty-two minutes and forty seconds (2: 22: 40), Shorter, a 10,000 metres and cross country runner, won the 1971 Fukuoka marathon in 2: 12:51. He later acknowledged that it was upon winning that event he felt that he had matured as a marathoner. Shorter would win the next three Fukuoka races to complete the only helmet trick in the event’s history.
Fukuoka was the scene of two world records. In 1967, Australian Derek Clayton stopped the clock at 2: 09: 37, having knocked the phenomenal time of two minutes and twenty-three seconds off the then world record. His countryman, Rob de Castella emulated him in 1981, crossing the line in the new record of 2: 08: 18. In 1980, two Japanese, Toshihiko Seko (2:09:45) and Takeshi Soh (2:09:53) became the first two runners to break two hours and ten minutes in the same race. In his second consecutive victory, in 2009, Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede set the course record of 2: 05:18.
Despite the development of a professional racing circuit and the fabulous incentives proffered by the Abbott World Marathon Majors (the Big Six) –Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York –Fukuoka managed to hold its own, and continued to attract an elite field, with the winning time only once exceeding 2: 10 :00, since 1992.
In the documentary, Inside the Outside – When the World Came to Fukuoka, specially made to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the race, 75 elite marathoners voiced their thoughts on having had the privilege of being invited to run at Fukuoka. In addition to lamenting the loss of the event, two recurring themes were constantly echoed by the former world class runners; the hospitality meted out by the Japanese hosts and the incredible level of organization to ensure the smooth running of the event. One former runner noted among the gifts he received were excellent running shoes, Asics Tigers which he eagerly shared with his friends. While, another invitee, wryly noted that the runners who seemed more interested in the geishas than the race, never received another invitation.
In March of this year, the Japan Running News broke the story that this year’s Fukuoka marathon would be the last. Citing a source involved with Japanese Associations of Athletics Federations the publication stated that the reasons given for discontinuing the race included the loss of sponsors and the high costs of producing the television broadcast.
No country is more obsessed about running than Japan. While the Kenyans and the Ethiopians have dominated the marathon running for the past three decades, Japan has produced more than one hundred runners, (compared to a mere twenty by the USA), who have clocked under 2:10 in the marathon. Then there is ekiden, a distance relay race, entirely unique to Japan. The Hakone Ekiden, run over two days during the New Year Holiday period is the second most watched televised event with an estimated 30 million viewers. Some observers have speculated that the proximity of this event to Fukuoka might have contributed to its demise.
Where do the losses of the oldest marathon in Japan, the Lake Biwa in March and now Fukuoka, which was awarded a World Heritage Plaque in 2019 stand in Japan’s running history? Will the passage of time align their disappearance with the tragedy of Kokichi Tsuburaya? On October 21, 1964, the final day of the Tokyo Olympics, Kokichi Tsuburaya won a bronze medal in the marathon, becoming the first Japanese athlete to claim a medal in the postwar era, and their only track and field medal of the Games. Entering the National Stadium in second place and despite the passionate home crowd urging him on, he faltered, finishing in third place. Vowing to make amends in Mexico City in 1968, he took his own life nine months before the Olympics. He was found with the bronze medal clutched in his hand. It is a bit baffling that Japan, of all countries, steeped in traditional values would allow an event of the magnitude of Wimbledon or the Masters to simply vanish from the sporting calendar. For posterity, the winner of the last Fukuoka Marathon was Kenyan Michael Githae in a time of 2:07:51.
Marathon fans with the Fukuoka Marathon on their bucket list of events to attend will now have to suffice with a visit to the Fukuoka Marathon Monument where one can view imprints of the soles of the winners’ feet. The list of winners reads like the Who’s Who of marathon running. Besides the names of Clayton, Shorter, de Castella, Kebede, one will find Jerome Drayton (69, 75 & 76), Bill Rodgers (77), Haile Gebrselassie (06), Patrick Makau (14, 15), 2000 Olympic champion Gezahegn Abera (99, 01 & 02), 1996 Olympic winner Josiah Thugwane (97), the late Samuel Wanjiru, 2008 Olympic champion (07), and two-time world champion Jaoud Gharib (10).
Four-time winner, Japanese Toshihi ko Seko (78, 79, 80 & 83) sums it up aptly, “It’s like part of my history is being erased.”
Thank you for the memories Fukuoka.