Background
Shigeki Tanaka was born on April 7, 1931 in Hiroshima, Japan.
茂樹 田中
Shigeki Tanaka was born on April 7, 1931 in Hiroshima, Japan.
He laid the groundwork for his career as a marathon runner by running 20 km from Shōbara to a Saijō municipal stadium as a high school student. He was a first-year student at Nihon University at the time of the Boston Marathon.
Japanese athletes had been barred from the 1948 Summer Olympics in London and from all major international competitions after World War II. The 1951 Boston Marathon was the first post-World War II athletic competition to invite Japanese athletes.
Tanaka was one of four Japanese runners invited to compete by Will Cloney of the Boston Athletic Association.
At the time, Tanaka was 20 years old, and weighed 118 pounds. The runners stopped in Hawaii, San Francisco and New York City en route to Boston.
Tanaka became the Boston Marathon's first Japanese winner. He won the event in 2:27:45, the third fastest time in the event's history to that point.
After his running career, Tanaka worked as a salaryman for a Tokyo area department store and served as a director at the Japanese Amateur Athletics Federation until his retirement.