Kanaguri Memorial Meet Kicks Off Japanese Track Season

by Brett Larner

With the start of the Japanese fiscal and academic year this week, outdoor track season gets rolling this Saturday at the Kanaguri Memorial Meet in Kumamoto. A distance-oriented meet with a focus on 5000 m, Kanaguri is the place where many of the top young talents make their debuts wearing new high school, university and corporate team colors.

Competition in the women's races is thin, with Kenyans Pauline Kamulu (Team Toto) and Susan Wairimu (Team Denso) leading 2014 Marugame Half Marathon winner Eri Makikawa (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) and the talented Yukari Abe (Team Shimamura) as the top contenders in Heat 2 of the 5000 m. The high school girls' 3000 m, featuring a long list of top juniors, may supply the more interesting races.

The big races on the men's side are heats 4 and 5 of the 5000 m. Heat 5 features three of the very best Japan-based Kenyans, Moscow World Championships 10000 m bronze medalist Paul Tanui (Team Kyudenko), two-time 3000 mSC junior world champion Jonathan Ndiku (Team Hitachi Butsuryu) and 2011 World Youth 3000 m gold medalist William Malel (Team Honda). Many of the best Japanese men are on the starting list, including past distance event national champions Yuki Matsuoka (Team Otsuka Seiyaku), Chihiro Miyawaki (Team Toyota), Yuki Sato (Team Nissin Shokuhin), Kensuke Takezawa (Team Sumitomo Denko) and Yuichiro Ueno (DeNA RC), Hakone aces Tadashi Isshiki (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.), Genki Yagisawa (Meiji Univ.) and Hideto Yamanaka (Nittai Univ.), and other big names including Takuya Fukatsu (Team Asahi Kasei), Shota Hattori (Team Honda), Masato Imai (Team Toyota Kyushu), Tsuyoshi Ugachi (Team Konica Minolta) and Tetsuya Yoroizaka (Team Asahi Kasei).

Heat 4 features a mostly-African field including many of the top Japan-based Kenyans and Ethiopians including Clement Langat (Team Subaru), Edward Waweru (Team NTN), Jacob Wanjuki (Team Aichi Seiko) and Patrick Muwaka (Team Aisan Kogyo). Hakone Ekiden stars Shuho Dairokuno (Meiji Univ.), Kota Murayama (Josai Univ.), Keisuke Nakatani (Komazawa Univ.), Yusuke Nishiyama (Komazawa Univ.) and Daichi Kamino (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) are also in Heat 4 looking for early-season PBs, with 2014 Hakone champion Toyo University ace Yuta Shitara making his pro debut with the Honda corporate team.

Shitara's identical twin brother Keita Shitara will likewise make his debut for 2014 New Year Ekiden national corporate champion Konica Minolta on Saturday at the Tokyo-area Setagaya Time Trials meet, where he will run as a pacer for a university 5000 m heat. Big-name pacers in other heats include talented half marathoners Mekubo Mogusu (Kenya/Team Nissin Shokuhin) and Masato Kihara (Team Kanebo).

The weekend's action is not limited to the track, though. Kihara's teammate Tomoyuki Morita (Team Kanebo), all-time #4 on the Japanese marathon debut list with a 2:09:12 in heavy rain at the 2012 Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon, will run Sunday's Brighton Marathon, where he is the #2 seed. Coached by Toshinari Takaoka, who debuted in 2:09:41 before running the still-standing Japanese national record of 2:06:16 a year later in Chicago, there is plenty of reason to hope that Morita will take another step forward in the Japanese ranks in Brighton.

Back on the home front, Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) will run his third marathon of the year at Sunday's amateur-level Saga Sakura Marathon. Saga is the first of two marathons Kawauchi plans to run in April in preparation for next month's Hamburg Marathon, where he will face greats Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) and Martin Lel (Kenya). Retired Berlin World Championships women's marathon silver medalist Yoshimi Ozaki will also appear at Saga as a special guest runner.

Rui Aoki and Shunsuke Kuwata Making U.S. Debut at United Airlines NYC Half

When the National University Half Marathon was canceled in 2011 after the massive earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan 2 days before the race, JRN talked to the New York Road Runners about bringing 2 collegiate runners to the United Airlines NYC Half Marathon the next weekend as a show of support. It wasn't possible to pull it together in the immediate aftermath of the disasters, but a year later we brought 2 young 2nd-years from Hakone Ekiden CR breaker Toyo University , Kento Otsu and Yuta Shitara , who had been the top 2 Japanese collegiate finishers at the Ageo City Half Marathon in November before Hakone. Shitara ran 1:01:48, at the time the fastest-ever by a Japanese man on U.S. soil, with Otsu running a solid 1:03:15. Thanks to that great start the Ageo-NYC partnership became a regular thing, and except for the pandemic it's continued every year since, expanding this year to June's New York Mini 10 km when 2 runners from Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden runne...

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How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

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