(Voice actor) Mr.Chris Koprowski

Shiso Kanaguri was a marathon runner during the early days of Japan’s track-and-field. In 1911, in a marathon held in Japan, Shiso Kanaguri established a world record of 2 hours 32 minutes and 45 seconds, 27 minutes faster than the previous record. In 1912, he participated in the 5th Stockholm Olympics as a representative of Japan. However, in this meet, Shiso Kanaguri came down with heat stroke during the race. Many factors contributed to this, such as the long travel on train, bad conditioning due to not being able to eat familiar food as there were no rice in the meals, and the car to pick him up on the day of the race didn’t come so he had to run to the field. In addition, the temperature that day was a record-hot 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). It was such a grueling race that half of the 68 runners in the race dropped out. Shiso Kanaguri was slated to participate in the 6th Berlin Olympics as well, but the games were cancelled due to the first World War. Shiso Kanaguri was already past his peak as a runner and ended his playing career without any notable accomplishments in the Olympics. However, from his experience, Shiso Kanaguri thought that marathon is a grueling sport that requires mental strength and perseverance to win. Therefore, he came up with the idea of training on the beaches to put a stress on the legs and back, and running in high altitudes where there is less oxygen, in order to strengthen lung and heart capacity. Furthermore, in order to give a sense of connectedness to the long-distance runners who are alone during races, Shiso Kanaguri made efforts to carry out a marathon relay race, which would be a team race. This marathon relay race that started in 1920 became known as “Hakone Ekiden.” Hakone Ekiden has become one of the biggest sporting events that is annually held on the 2nd and 3rd of January. The distance between Otemachi in Tokyo to Ashinoko, Hakone-cho, in Kanagawa, is divided into 10 blocks and spans 217.1 kilometers. The runners go outward on the 1st day and homeward on the 2nd day, and participating universities compete their times. There is a huge crowd along the roadside, and many people follow the heated competition of college runners through TV and radio broadcasting. This Hakone Ekiden originally started with Shiso Kanaguri’s aspiration to develop the nation’s top-class long-distance runners. Shiso Kanaguri left a huge achievement for Japan’s track-and-field. He actually has an unbreakable “immortal world record” in marathon. What do you think that is? It is the slowest world record for marathon. The time is 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 20.3 seconds. A marathon is 42.195 kilometers. An ordinary person can walk that distance in one day. Why did it take this long, then? Behind this record, there was a thoughtful arrangement by the Olympic Committee to Shiso Kanaguri, who contributed to the advancement of track-and-field. This is a story of marathon’s slowest world record.