Skip to main content

World Marathon Majors Japanese Entries


We're back from a short summer break. A week and a half out from the first race of the season's four World Marathon Majors races, here's a look at Japanese athletes scheduled to run. Everything right now is about qualifying for the MGC Race, the official trials race for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to be held in the fall of 2027 in Nagoya.

The JAAF makes no mistake about wanting to keep its top people racing domestically where it can get a share of revenue from the TV broadcast and race operations, so anyone who decides to race overseas has to do it in a WA platinum label race and hit either 2:06:30 or 2:23:30, regardless of place, course or weather if they want to make the trials. At the same time concessions are make for domestic races, like for example the late-August Hokkaido Marathon where up to 3 men and 3 women can qualify if they go 2:12:00 or 2:32:00. As a result, you get things like last year where amateur runner Yudai Fukuda made the trials by finishing 3rd Japanese in Hokkaido in 2:11:59, while Masato Arao ran 2:07:42 for 6th overall on the brutal Sydney Marathon course the same day and didn't qualify.

Combine that with the schedule constraints of ekiden season and it's not hard to figure where most people will go. The Sydney Marathon, where the hilly course is estimated to be around 2 minutes slow, has Fukuda and the MGC-qualified Mizuki Nishimura in its field, along with second-tier men Kosei Shiraishi and Yoshihiro Maeda.

In terms of chasing time it's either Berlin or Chicago, but with big ekidens in November most people these days opt for the Berlin Marathon. All 4 women and the top 4 men there have already qualified for the MGC Race and are chasing times, with Mao Uesugi and Rika Kaseda leading the women and Tsubasa Ichiyama and Kiyoto Hirabayashi the men. 2 prominent alumni from Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University, Asahi Kuroda and Aoi Ota, had planned to run Berlin but are out with injury.

All 3 men at the Chicago Marathon with marathon experience have qualified for the trials, NR holder Suguru Osako leading last year's Berlin runner-up Akira Akasaki and ekiden specialist Kiyoshi Koga. Joining them is half marathon NR holder Tomoki Ota in his debut, hopefully fit to go after mostly being out of action since dislocating his shoulder in a fall at the start of the Tokyo Golden Grand Prix 3000 m in May last year. Akasaki's wife Yuka Akasaki is the only Japanese woman in the field and has to hit the 2:23:30 MGC standard to qualify.

The New York City Marathon is the only one of the WMM to have never had a Japanese winner in either its women's or men's races, mostly because its timing conflicts the most with ekiden season. Rie Kawauchi, former NR holder Kengo Suzuki and Ryota Kondo have all already made the trials, and Suzuki in particular has the freedom to pursue races like NYCM having quit the corporate system last fall to go independent.

Athletes with an asterisk have already qualified for the MGC Race. Times listed are athletes' best within last 3 years except where noted.

Sydney Marathon, 30 August

Women
*Mizuki Nishimura (Tenmaya) - 2:25:54 (1st, Hofu 2025)

Men
Kosei Shiraishi (Sumitomo Denko) - 2:08:42 (6th, Beppu-Oita 2025)
*Yudai Fukuda (Runners Connect) - 2:11:16 (Beppu-Oita 2026)
Yoshihiro Maeda (Kurosaki Harima) - 2:11:56 (12th, Beppu-Oita 2025)

Berlin Marathon, 27 September

Women
*Mao Uesugi (Tokyo Metro) - 2:22:11 (4th, Nagoya 2025)
*Rika Kaseda (Daihatsu) - 2:22:11 (4th, Nagoya 2024)
*Natsuki Omori (Daihatsu) - 2:23:45 (5th, Nagoya 2026)
*Rino Goshima (Shiseido) - 2:24:44 (7th, Nagoya 2026)

Men
*Tsubasa Ichiyama (Sunbelx) - 2:06:00 (10th, Tokyo 2025)
*Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Logisteed) - 2:06:14 (5th, Osaka 2026)
*Yuhei Urano (Fujitsu) - 2:06:23 (13th, Tokyo 2025)
*Yusuke Nishiyama (Toyota) - 2:06:31 (9th, Tokyo 2024)
Naoki Koyama (Honda) - 2:06:33 (3rd, Osaka 2024)
Kenya Sonota (JR Higashi Nihon) - 2:06:54 (Tokyo 2024)
Hidekazu Hijikata - 2:07:20 (2nd, Gold Coast 2026)
Shin Kimura (Honda) - 2:07:34 (14th, Tokyo 2024)
*Kazuya Nishiyama (Toyota) - 2:07:49 (2nd, Hofu 2025)
*Daisuke Uekado (Otsuka Seiyaku) - 2:09:03 (12th, Seoul 2026)

Chicago Marathon, 11 October

Women
Yuka Akasaki (Kraftia) - 2:21:33 (3rd, Osaka Women's 2025)

Men
*Suguru Osako (Li Ning) - 2:04:55 (NR, 4th, Valencia 2025)
*Akira Akasaki (Kraftia) - 2:06:15 (2nd, Berlin 2025)
*Kiyoshi Koga (Yasukawa Denki) - 2:07:46 (6th, Beppu-Oita 2026)
debut - Tomoki Ota (Toyota) - 59:27 (2nd, Marugame Half 2025)

New York City Marathon, 1 November

Women
*Rie Kawauchi (Otsuka Seiyaku) - 2:24:16 (6th, Osaka Women's 2026)

Men
*Ryota Kondo (Mitsubishi Juko) - 2:05:39 (2nd, Osaka 2025)
*Kengo Suzuki (Nike) - 2:06:09 (13th, Tokyo 2026)

photo © 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
text © 2026 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Huge interest for me in seeing how Yuka Akasaki runs the Chicago Marathon. She's been injured for a while and will rely on her training being sufficient to get her back into top form. I'd love to see her get a PB and attain MGC qualification. Also if her husband can get a PB in the mens that would be quite some outcome for the pair.

Being from Sydney, I'd like to see Mizuki Nishmura get a PB on the tough course. The morning weather has been perfect of late for a fast time so I hope it doesn't suddenly get hot on race day!
August 21, 2026 at 12:43 PM
Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

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...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more