Just over a month since his 17th birthday, Taiju Goto proved his 48.31 U18 WR in the men's 400 mH heats yesterday wasn't a fluke as he bettered that in the final on the last day of the 110th National Track and Field Championships in Nagoya. Slow in the start, Goto picked up momentum coming up to 200 m before really getting into gear, pulling away from the rest of the field in the last 100 m to win in 48.09, another U18 WR, a new U20 NR, and a run that made him the first high schooler ever to with the Nationals 400 mH. Now only 0.20 off the senior NR, Goto joins the list of Rakunan H.S. talent to be re-writing the record books that includes Yoshihide Kiryu , Ryuji Miura , Keita Sato and Toshinari Takaoka . Another Nationals MR went down, this one in the women's 3000 mSC thanks to NR holder Miu Saito . Having taken 3rd in the 5000 m 2 days ago, Saito started out a little on the conservative side with company from last year's winner Manami Nishiyama in the first 1000 ...
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In both of the amateur-oriented clubs I coach in Tokyo, one a paid-membership organization, the other sponsored by one of the major makers, the large majority of members are people who had never run or had not run seriously/run a marathon prior to the onset of Tokyo. That's also the case for most of the other paid and maker-sponsored clubs which continue to spring up across Japan. Much of the growth sector of the industry here is geared toward the beginner. It's possible that many of them had always wanted to run, if that's what you are suggesting, but Tokyo was the catalyst that brought them all into the sport in my experience here.
--Wesleyan grad