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The most exciting names to watch are Takehiro Deki (Team Chugoku Denryoku), who ran a 2:10:02 debut his junior year at Aoyama Gakuin University and makes a return to the marathon for the first time since then fresh off a superb anchor stage win at the National Men's Ekiden last weekend, and 30 km collegiate national record holder Yuma Hattori (Toyo Univ.) who like Deki is making his marathon debut as a university third-year and likewise comes in off a big ekiden performance, a win on the Hakone Ekiden's most competitive stage earlier this month. It's safe to say that none of the Japanese men will hit the Federation's ultra-realistic sub-2:06:30 requirement for automatic selection to the Beijing World Championships team, but the day could surpass the legendary 2003 Fukuoka International Marathon where six Japanese men broke 2:10 including three sub-2:08.
Belying Tokyo's roots as a men-only race, the women's field is significantly smaller, especially on the home front. Course record holder Tirfi Tsegaye (Ethiopia) is absent, leaving London Olympics gold medalist Tiki Gelana (Ethiopia) and last year's runner-up Birhane Dibaba (Ethiopia) at the top of the list. Like Gelana a former Japan resident, Flomena Cheyech Daniel (Kenya) is another top contender after a solid 2:22:44 win in Paris last spring. The most exciting part of the women's race looks to be the debut of another Japan-based Kenyan, 2014 Copenhagen World Half Marathon bronze medalist Sally Chepyego (Team Kyudenko), who comes in off a long string of wins inside Japan.
The structure of the Tokyo Marathon, counted in World Championships and Olympic team selection for men but not for women, prevents the best Japanese women from running against the best international women's field on Japanese soil every year, something that seems counter to what a World Marathon Major should stand for but which the others seem to have signed off on. The top Japanese women are not what they used to be, but even so there is not a single top-level Japanese woman, not even one from 2014's ten fastest, in the Tokyo field.
