Shizo Kanakuri & the Only 54 Year Marathon in History

Shizo Kanakuri (sometimes stylized Kanaguri) is a man whose name isn’t known much outside of Japan and obscure Swedish Olympic Games enthusiasts. Yet he’s the world record holder for the longest marathon spanning 54 years in which he’d gotten married, had 6 children and 10 grandchildren.

Though he didn’t win the gold medal he set out to take, his legacy lives on as the father of marathon due to being one of only 2 athletes to represent Japan in its first participation of the Olympic games in Stockholm 1912.

But his story wouldn’t be memorable if it ended at him being the first Japanese marathon participant would it? No if anything, being first to the Olympics is the least interesting portion of his story.

Japan’s first Olympic participants

20 year old Shizo Kanakuri was selected alongside Yahiko Mishima to represent Japan as marathon and track & field runners respectively. Not only would they be the first athletes representing Japan on the world stage, they would be representing Asia as a whole as Japan would be the first Asian nation to participate in the summer Olympics at that point.

Attending the 1912 Olympic games was no simple feat, there was no sponsorship or government grant to bring budding athletes which means that Kanakuri’s friends and family had to help with fundraising the 1800 yen required for tavel expenses.

Shizo Kanakuri’s domestic time during another trial placed him first with a time of 2:32:45, making him more than qualified to contend for gold that year. All was not well when came time for the Stockholm Olympics however, because that was a running time he would not touch in his Olympic career.

Sadly for Kanakuri, travel in the 1912s was quite the ordeal. His own trip from Tamana spanned 18 days by ship & rail through Siberia in which he would run along the station platforms at every stop to keep up his fitness.

On the journey, his coach was bedridden due to tuberculosis and Yahiko Mishima got sick during the journey which meant that he spent more time taking care of his fellow travelers than getting pre-race training though perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered anyway considering what happened next.

By the time raceday came, he ran in traditional Japanese Tabi (a leather footwear) with a registered temperature of 90F (32c) and despite toughing through, he managed to run about 27km before he stopped to ask for refreshments, allegedly passing out on the Petra family’s couch afterwards. I’m being deliberately vague as to what happened here because there’s conflicting stories and it seems that Kanakuri never gave an official answer.

Misfortune wasn’t all on Kanakuri’s shoulders though. Of the 68 runners on that day, only 34 finished the race. In fact, Portuguese runner Francisco Lázaro died of heat exhaustion from that same race. The main reason for that is that prior to the 50s, it was commonly believed that hydrating before a race and perspiring was harmful to performance so the preparation methods left many of the athletes too depleted by race day.

Due to his failure to complete the race, Kanakuri decided it would be best to leave Sweden without checking in with the authorities and shaming Japan with his performance. It’s a pity that he wasn’t aware that half of the runners also didn’t manage to finish the race.

It’s the morning after my defeat. My heart is aching with regret for the rest of my life. It was the most significant day of my life. But failure teaches success, and I can only wait for the day with fair weather after the rain so that I can clean up my shame.

Excerpt from Shizo Kanakuri’s journal the day after his marathon.

While back home, he helped establish the Hakone Ekiden, a 2 day university relay that is unofficially credited by some for preparing Japanese runners in winning many of its running medals on the world stage.

Kanakuri would also go on to participate in 2 more olympic races in 1920 ending 16th and in 1924 ending with a DNF while officially still being listed as missing in Sweden. He was also selected for the 1916 Olympics though the Great War cancelled those events. It’s worth noting that the war and the paper nature of records of the time meant that everybody was too busy to notice that the missing runner had run 2 marathons since his unfinished one.

Apparently his disappearance had mostly been forgotten from public consciousness until the 50th anniversary of the event brought the incident of the missing runner back into the limelight. It was here, that journalists found out that Kanakuri was still alive and well in Japan.

In 1967, Sveriges Television (Sweden’s public broadcaster) reached out to Kanakuri inviting him to attend the 55th anniversary of the games. They deliberately omitted that they would offer him a chance to complete his race for worry that he’d refuse to come. He would accept both offers, find out he was more famous in Sweden than Japan and get reunited with the Petra family. Most importantly, he’d finally close out his marathon at 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours and 20.3 seconds. The record wasn’t an official Olympic one but a Guinness World Record. Besides, I doubt any of the original judges were still alive to dispute that fact.

Not bad?

How’s that for a story? It just goes to show that when you put in a lot of effort, they eventually get immortalized in some way. Sometimes in rather unexpected ways.

Speaking of unexpected ways, did you know Shizo Kanakuri was one of 3 faces that Glico drew inspiration from for the Glico Running Man? Talk about an unexpected thing.

Oh, and if you’re gonna go running. Don’t do what Kanakuri did and wear actual athletic sneakers will you? Your knees and hips will thank you.

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