3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
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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