The June 20 Arakawa Smile Marathon was the first one to happen since early March this year, a small amateur event along a Tokyo riverbank with a variety of distances up to 30 km. It followed up July 4 with another edition. At this point it has editions planned monthly until January, with an extra running planned in Shizuoka in October. Last weekend the Hokkaido University Ekiden also took place on a short loop course in a Sapporo park with five men's teams and four women's teams.
And that's it so far. Looking forward, along with the Smile event's upcoming editions, the elite-level Okukuma Ekiden on Oct. 4 insists that it will go ahead with its first running despite the coronavirus crisis and large-scale flood damage in the area. If it does, it will benefit from the Izumo Ekiden's cancelation by picking up most of the top university men's teams who had originally planned to run Izumo a week later.
The Nov. 1 Saku AC Makomanai Marathon in Hokkaido announced this week that it's going ahead. Limited to 1,500 Hokkaido residents, Makomanai will be run on a 10 km loop course with runners starting in groups of up to 50 people of similar ability staggered over the course of two hours.
Iwate's Miyako Salmon Half Marathon also announced this week that it will happen as planned on Nov. 8 on a reduced scale. Limited to 500 residents of Miyako and three neighboring towns, the race is cutting the half marathon this year and will feature only 10 km, 5 km and 2 km races.
The Dec. 6 Shonan International Marathon, at 16,821 finishers last time the only autumn Japanese marathon with over 5,000 finishers not to cancel this year, announced that it will move to Feb. 28 but intends to go ahead at its full size. On the one hand the cancelation of similarly-sized events in January, February and March isn't encouraging for Shonan's chances of following through, but on the other, Shonan is one of the only privately-organized major marathons in Japan, most others put on by local governments who have a significantly lower threshold of risk aversion. Time will tell.
The Dec. 20 Hofu Yomiuri Marathon has also announced it will go ahead on a limited scale, with an elite field restricted to a dozen invited athletes, 100 corporate league elites, 300 locals, and a few blind runners with guides.
Most of the big ekidens apart from Izumo and the Nihonkai Ekiden, the Fukuoka International Marathon, and the Sanyo Ladies Half Marathon have yet to make a public statement about whether they'll go ahead. It's hard to see Fukuoka completely canceling, and at the very least the national level ekidens will probably go ahead in some form, but with not much reason for optimism on the whole, it's nice to see at least a few events finding ways to adapt to the new challenges of the times. Big, rigid and inflexible events and organizations may go the way of the dinosaurs after the asteroid hit, but it'll be the mice scrabbling around in the grass on the fringes that survive to carry things forward. Running finds a way.
© 2020 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
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