Japanese mind of for-the-team and the new year road relay race – Hakone Ekiden

Update: 5 January 2019, Last Update: 5 February 2019

Beginning of a year, Japan has a road relay race called Hakone Ekiden. About 20 teams from universities in Kanto region can participate in the race. 10 members from a team joins the race by handing a sash one after another and each runs about 20 km. This is a symbolic new year event. A lot of student runners hoping to be on the race work really hard throughout entire university life or even from their childhood.

This year, a first runner from one of the teams fell down and sprained his ankle, but he continued the race. If he had stopped it, the race for his team would have ended. The meaning of handling a sash to a next runner is huge for a team. That’s why he continued to run. Not just for the following runners, but also for the entire team.

According to Yahoo! News which cited an article of Japanese sport newspaper SPORTS HOCHI[1], the runner was told to take 6 months for recovery of his ankle. It also says that from April, he is supposed to run for a company.

In Japan, there’s some sort of atmosphere that those who sacrificing themselves for others is what should praise.

But is it really a good thing to dedicate themselves for others even though in this case he got a heavy injure taking 6 months to recover? Although on the race he continued running, his team should have stopped him and the race. Or for the future cases, it would be better to give the directors of the road race the authority to stop a runner who looks getting an serious injury. He wanted to do his best and actually made his best race for team, but it’s not good that the society praise his action because in the future if others encounter the same case, they would do the same. In the worst case, some might think from such precedent cases that they have to continue the race. To prevent this self-sacrifice-for-team case, I would suggest that the society or people surrounding athletes must stop those actions.

This kind of case is what we should end for the future. Runners might want to continue, but people surrounding them should not permit it.

[1]https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20190104-00000167-sph-spo Accessed 4 January 2018