For the second year in a row 5000 m NR holder Ririka Hironaka (Japan Post) took the top spot in JRN's overall Japanese women's rankings, and she got there the same way. After running her 5000 m NR and a 10000 m PB at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Hironaka ran big again at the 2022 Oregon World Championships. Her 30:39.71 in the 10000 m was a 21-second improvement on her PB and the 2nd-fastest ever by a Japanese woman. This time she missed making the 5000 m final, but her 15:02.03 in her heat still ended up being the 2nd-fastest Japanese time of the year.
Post-Worlds Hironaka dropped off a bit, unable to break 15 minutes in the fall track time trial season. But at November's National Corporate Women's Ekiden she delivered the women's ekiden performance of the year, fighting off tough competition to hang onto the lead for the Japan Post team on the race's most competitive stage. Given her lack of experience with the 10000 m, her big jump up in quality this year puts her on the short list of contenders to break the NR at that distance, and at the half marathon whenever she goes for it.
6th in last year's overall rankings, Rino Goshima (Shiseido) moved up to #2 this year with good performances from 5000 m to the half marathon. She kicked the year off with a 1:08:03 for 2nd at the National Corporate Half Marathon, the fastest Japanese time of the year, took 3rd in June's National Championships in 15:13.53, and won December's Edion Distance Challenge 10000 m in 31:22.38. En route she also won the 10.0 km fifth leg at the National Corporate Women's Ekiden to put the Shiseido team in position for the overall win.
In her second corporate league season with the Daihatsu team Rika Kaseda had impressive range to take the #3 overall spot, running the 5th-fastest Japanese times of the year for 5000 m, 10000 m and marathon, and landing 18th on the half marathon rankings. She was also the next-fastest on the National Corporate Women's Ekiden's 10.9 km third leg behind Hironaka. Along with #4 overall Ai Hosoda (Edion) and #5 Yuka Ando (Wacoal) Kaseda was one of only three women who pulled off top 25 placings at all four distances. The marathon seems like the most likely direction she'll go, but Kaseda has a lot of options for 2023 and beyond.
In terms of depth, 17 women broke 15:30, the most ever. The 10000 m was nothing special, with 8 women under 32 minutes, and likewise for the half marathon, where 10 went under 70 minutes including 5 who did it in the first half of a marathon. But marathon depth was exceptional. The 25th-fastest time was Ayano Ikemitsu's 2:28:53 in January in Osaka. Japan has never had a 25th-fastest women under 2:31 before. Sure, most of that is the shoes, but with 9 women under 2:23 and 5 under 2:22, even adding 3 minutes or so it was still the deepest year at quality Japan has ever had.
But taken with this, the kind of range that Kaseda, Hosoda and Ando showed also revealed a problem. For the first time since JRN started doing rankings, only 24 women scored points to place in the top 25. 7 out of the 10 fastest women over 5000 m and 10000 m also made the top 25 at another distance, and all 10 in the half and marathon did. In other words, while overall depth is pretty good, at the front end it's a very small number of women carrying the mantle. Young athletes like Kaseda stepping up is encouraging, but there's a real issue here. JRN looked at it in more detail earlier this year in relation to Japan's worldwide ranking on gender equality.
Comparison to U.S. women also illuminates the problem. For 5000 m Japan had 1 woman sub-15 and 17 sub-15:30. The U.S.A. had 5 sub-15 and 37 sub-15:30. For 10000 m it was 1 sub-31 and 8 sub-32 for Japan. For the U.S., 3 sub-31 and 25 sub-32. For the half, Japan had 3 sub-69 and 5 sub-70, with another 5 sub-70 in marathons. The U.S. had 3 sub-69, all of them also sub-68, and 8 sub-70, with another 2 sub-70 in marathons. The 25th-fastest American marathon time, 2:30:28, was nowhere near Japan's 25th-fastest, but where Japan's fastest time was Mizuki Matsuda's 2:20:52 win in Osaka in January, two American women went sub-2:20, Keira D'Amato tying Mizuki Noguchi's 2:19:12 Japanese NR in Houston in January and Emily Sisson going to the next level with a 2:18:29 in Chicago in October.
And in terms of competitiveness it wasn't even close. Matsuda bafflingly spent the entire World Championships marathon running in sight of the trio of American women at the same pace instead of joining them early on, and lost to all three. D'Amato doubled back from that in Berlin two months later and beat Kaseda, Ayuko Suzuki and Sayaka Sato, who all ran sub-2:23 PBs. Japan still had an edge in the average of its 10 fastest times of the year, where the U.S.A. has made a lot of progress over the last 10 years but hasn't surpassed Japan since 1990, but the results in Eugene and Berlin were in line with global championships results over the same decade or so.
Japan's last global marathon medals were Noguchi's Olympic silver in 2004 and Kayoko Fukushi's Worlds bronze in Moscow in 2013. Since those, the U.S. had 2 women ahead of Japan's best at the 2012 London Olympics, all 3 ahead of Japan's first finisher at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and a bronze medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. It also had a bronze and 2 finishers before the top Japanese woman at the 2017 London World Championships and one placer ahead of Japan's top placer at the 2019 Doha World Championships, plus this year's results.
Throw in American wins at the NYC and Boston marathons against more competitive fields that Japanese women ever face in their big domestic races and it's pretty clear which country has the edge in relevance. Japan has always had an advantage as the distance increases, but it's safe to say 2022 was the year where that went away. Whether for good, and where to go from there, remains to be seen in 2023 and beyond.
© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
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