I’m aiming for a sectional prize at the Hakone Ekiden!” Takuma Akiyoshi, an exceptional University of Tokyo student, will participate in the race for the second year in a row!

First runner from Todai to win a sectional award

“Would it make a better picture if I swung my arms wider?

A young man in a jersey with a fresh smile was photographed at the main gate of the Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo. He is Takuma Akiyoshi, a senior student in the Department of Mechanical and Computer Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, and a member of the track and field team. Akiyoshi participated in the Hakone Ekiden in January 2013 as a member of the Kanto Student Union, and after placing 12th individually in the preliminary round in October, he is likely to participate in the Hakone Ekiden next January for the second year in a row, an unprecedented feat for a Tokyo University student. Akiyoshi said of his team’s performance: “The last Hakone Ekiden was an eight-race race, and I was in the top eight.

In the last Hakone Ekiden, I ran in the 8th section and finished 7th in 1 hour, 4 minutes, and 45 seconds (a reference record for the Kanto Student Union). I was aiming for a “new sectional record,” so it was frustrating. Next time, I will seriously aim for the ″sectional award″!”

Akiyoshi’s words were no exaggeration: in the men’s 5,000m at the Tokyo Six University Games held in April, he won the World University Games half marathon in a new meet record, finishing first ahead of Waseda University’s Shinsuke Kudo (junior), known as the “mountain detective” for his glasses-wearing appearance. Akiyoshi is expected to be the first University of Tokyo student to win a “sectional prize,” but he is a “late bloomer” as a track and field athlete.

I attended Rokko Gakuin, an integrated junior and senior high school in Hyogo Prefecture, and was a member of the soccer club until junior high school,” he said. However, I was not a good soccer player because I was slow in the short distance and my body was small, so I was often outclassed. The turning point for me came in my second year of junior high school, when I won first place in a 30-km run for the entire school. I thought that long-distance running might be better suited to me than soccer, so I joined the track and field club in high school.

It broke my heart.

Akiyoshi, who says that he enjoyed running, emerged as a runner and set a personal best time of 14:58.94 for 5,000m at the Hyogo Track & Field Spring Meet held in April of his junior year of high school. When it came to university entrance examinations, he narrowed his focus to the University of Tokyo.

The top university in Japan is the University of Tokyo, and the top student long-distance runner is Hakone Ekiden. I wanted to be the best in both the literary and military arts. I didn’t study all the time because I was going to take the University of Tokyo entrance exam. After studying for a few hours in the study room, I would go for a 1 km run around the campus to take a break. I would then return to the study room to study again. It was my own rhythm of life.

Akiyoshi passed the University of Tokyo’s Science Department with flying colors. He immediately joined the track and field team.

I joined the club with confidence, thinking that I could easily become an ace at the University of Tokyo,” he said. But there were many athletes at the University of Tokyo who were faster than me, in the low 14-minute range for 5,000 meters. That broke my heart. I had a sense of crisis that I would never be able to compete in the Hakone Ekiden, and I began to devote myself to training.

Luckily for Akiyoshi, his coach, Shuichi Kondo, an alumnus of the University of Tokyo who had competed in the Hakone Ekiden and had experience in the business world, took over at the same time he entered the school. He added an 800-meter run to the University of Tokyo’s 400-meter and 1,000-meter runs that the team had been practicing up to that point, and he instilled in the athletes the importance of speed and the difficulty of pacing themselves according to distance.

Coach Kondo would say, ‘You can definitely achieve (the target record). He would say repeatedly, ‘I’m sure you can do it,’ and that would naturally make the athletes ‘feel like it. My confidence grew, and I improved my 5,000m record by 30 seconds every year.

In his academic work, he is researching prosthetic legs for athletes. He runs 5 km from his home to the university to attend classes. He practices in the evenings until around 8 p.m., and before tests he studies until the library closes.

This year I ran in the Hakone Ekiden for the first time, and surprisingly even I was able to relax. It was like a dream, being cheered incessantly. …… I hope to enjoy it again next year and set a new sectional record. After graduation, while continuing my studies at graduate school, I will join the track and field team of “MABP,” where Daichi Kamino, who was known as the “God of the Mountain” during my time at Aoyama Gakuin University, is both an athlete and coach. I want to challenge my limits in both academics and long distance.”

He is not fazed by the prospect of competing in the Hakone Ekiden in January next year, which will be his second race in the event.

From the December 12, 2025 issue of FRIDAY