Description

Book Synopsis
Japanese have been fervid long-distance runners for many centuries. Today, on a per capita basis, at least as many Japanese residents complete marathons each year as in the United States or any other country. Marathon Japan is the first comprehensive English-language chronicle of the history of this important part of Japanese sports culture. It traces the development of distance racing beginning with the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, when the Japanese government used athletics, and above all the marathon, as a means to continue its late nineteenth-century project of winning the respect of Western countries and achieving parity with the world powers. The marathon soon became the first event in a Western-derived sport in which Japanese proved consistently superior to athletes from other countries. During the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese runners regularly produced the fastest times in the world, and twice in the period after World War Two - in the 1960s and late 1970sâ1980s - Japanese men agai

Marathon Japan Distance Racing and Civic Culture

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    A Hardback by Thomas R. H. Havens

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      Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
      Publication Date: 2/28/2015 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780824841010, 978-0824841010
      ISBN10: 0824841018
      Also in:
      Marathon and cross-country running

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Japanese have been fervid long-distance runners for many centuries. Today, on a per capita basis, at least as many Japanese residents complete marathons each year as in the United States or any other country. Marathon Japan is the first comprehensive English-language chronicle of the history of this important part of Japanese sports culture. It traces the development of distance racing beginning with the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, when the Japanese government used athletics, and above all the marathon, as a means to continue its late nineteenth-century project of winning the respect of Western countries and achieving parity with the world powers. The marathon soon became the first event in a Western-derived sport in which Japanese proved consistently superior to athletes from other countries. During the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese runners regularly produced the fastest times in the world, and twice in the period after World War Two - in the 1960s and late 1970sâ1980s - Japanese men agai

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