Hitomi Kinue — Aloof? I Never Could Be

Marching In Alone

"If I win, the people of Japan will welcome me warmly. But I know I am going to lose."

"When I lose, what kind of face will the people of Japan have when they look at me? My friends, the runners who came before me, the ones who come after?"

She was nineteen (twenty by the Japanese way of counting). This, she wrote years later, was what frightened her most.

She felt she was saying goodbye to the city of Osaka, to Okayama where she was born, to her father and mother, to her sister's face. It felt like setting out on a journey with no return. For a month she lay awake, full of worry, and could not sleep.

Her name was Hitomi Kinue. In 1926 she wrote articles at a big newspaper, the Osaka Mainichi, and ran as a track and field athlete at the same time. In meets in Japan, she kept setting new records.

That August, an international meet for women only was to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden. She was the only athlete Japan was sending.

What kind of people were the women athletes from other countries? How did they throw the javelin? What form did they use for the discus? She knew nothing, she wrote, looking back.

"I was completely ignorant."

July 8, 1926, eight o'clock at night. On the platform at Osaka Station, the departure bell was ringing loudly.

Just as the train was about to move, Dr. Kinoshita, who had come to see her off, said something. She later wrote his words down in her own book.

"Miss Hitomi, please stop looking so lonely. Even your teacher is worried about sending a young girl off on a trip alone."

"But you are twenty now. I am sure the day will come when you return home, having done this great task. I would like to give you a farewell gift, but I have nothing worth giving."

Instead, the doctor had made a uniform and a pair of shorts for her.

"Think of these as me. Wear them over there, and fight hard on the field."

There was one more thing, he went on.

"When you get there, there will be times when you cannot talk even to Mr. Kuroda, the only other Japanese, and have no one to turn to, and cannot even cry."

"Then close your eyes and pray to the gods of Japan. Anyone will do. You will surely be saved."

Kuroda was the one manager who traveled with her.

On the first day of the meet in Gothenburg, she overslept.

Manager Kuroda, from the next room, put his head out of his door and, smiling, said, she wrote:

"Well, you're up. The street below the window is already full of noon. It's past eleven. I thought you were dead, but you're alive. Even sleeping has its limits."

She scrubbed her body hard with cold tap water.

At five that afternoon, the opening ceremony began.

The athletes of each country walked in, in lines. The Japanese athlete was, again, only her. Squeezed between the French and Lithuanian athletes, she walked with a small flag of Japan, about sixty centimeters (two feet) square, "holding it up, no, hugging it."

In front of the main grandstand, the champions of each country raised their hands cheerfully and bowed. She did not know that custom. And she did not have the heart to do it alone.

"I was truly lonely."

To the beat of the band's march, she went once around the 400-meter track. All the while, she kept looking up at the flag in her arms.

"Look at me. I am the only Japanese athlete. Alone is fine. Let's do this with spirit."

If in these three days she were hurt, or behaved shamefully, who else would protect this flag of the rising sun?

"Alive or dead, I will work for this flag."

When she had thought that far, she wrote, tears filled her eyes, and she felt them run down her cheeks.

This time, she could still cry.

The "time when you cannot even cry" that Dr. Kinoshita spoke of came the very next day, in the long jump.

Too Sad Even to Cry

Seventy thousand people filled the stadium for the long jump.

Her main rival was Gunn of Britain. She is usually a gentle, quiet person, Hitomi wrote.

In the second qualifying jump, Hitomi leaped 5.33 meters. Gunn picked up her run-up speed and jumped 5.43.

Then a small commotion broke out.

After her jump, Gunn, not at all like her usual self, came over to Hitomi in excitement. She grabbed Hitomi's arm and kept shaking her hand. She seemed to be saying that she had jumped 5.60 and would take first prize.

Hitomi knew little English and could not fully take in what Gunn said. Guessing at the general meaning, she is said to have answered:

"Your record is 5.43. Mine is 5.33... And you can take first prize."

She herself had told her rival that she was losing.

But Gunn would not accept it. "No, no, 5.60," she said. She apparently believed she had jumped 5.60. Only when the British manager told her it was 5.43 did Gunn finally understand.

Twenty minutes later, the final began.

Hitomi was good at taking off from her right foot. But that day, no matter how many times she jumped, her take-off landed on her left foot. Meanwhile Gunn stretched her record. Hitomi watched the happy British manager and athletes with envy.

"My heart suddenly grew irritated. How pitiful this was."

The fifth jump. Her take-off fit even worse. Her heart rushed, and her movement in the air went wrong. As she tried to pull both hands up, the sharp point of her spike, filed to a needle, cut deep into her own right palm in six places.

Her record was 5.31 meters. She stared at the markings on the tape in the judge's hand.

"I had almost no hope or strength left."

Hitomi put on the sweater she had thrown off. She hid her wounded hand under it and went back to Manager Kuroda's side.

Only one jump remained.

Would Britain win, or Japan? Seventy thousand people waited in silence. Even the athletes who had been knocked out in the qualifying round were split into two sides, cheering for each. Athletes from Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Belgium gathered around Hitomi and her manager to comfort her, while on Gunn's side an athlete from France was giving her a massage.

"Hitomi, do your best. There is still one more."

Manager Kuroda's face, as he said this, was so blue it hardly looked like a normal person's, and his lips kept trembling.

Two letters had come from home. Since you left, your mother and sister pray twice a day to the guardian god of our village for your victory. It is for the country, so do your best. That was the meaning of the letters.

The people at the newspaper had told her before she left to be sure to win the long jump. What sadness this result would bring her family at home! How could she apologize to her company and to the public?

"An apology alone will not be enough."

She could tell this painful feeling to no one: not the seventy thousand people watching, not the nearly one hundred sixty athletes from many countries, not even Manager Kuroda, the only other Japanese.

"At that moment, I could not even cry."

When she stood at the start of the last run-up, Hitomi suddenly remembered. What Dr. Kinoshita had said on the platform at Osaka Station on the night of July 8.

Quietly, Hitomi closed her eyes.

"Please, just once. Let me jump."

As she prayed with all her heart, the tears she had been holding back suddenly ran down both cheeks. She wiped and wiped, but they would not stop. So many tears came that she felt ashamed in front of Gunn, who stood beside her. The ground of the thirty-meter run-up was blurred.

She ran. Her right foot hit the take-off board, which was 24 centimeters (about nine and a half inches) wide, hard.

"I did it... I jumped. For the first time, I jumped."

5.50 meters.

She wanted to shout for joy right then. But Gunn's last jump was still to come. Hitomi did not watch Gunn's run-up or anything else. She only stared at the take-off board.

Gunn's left foot had gone over the board by about 1.5 centimeters (half an inch). It was a foul.

For the first time, she had beaten Gunn.

The silent stands rose all at once. The sound of shoes pounding on the stands and a roar of applause did not stop for a long time. Amid voices calling "Hello, Hitomi, Hitomi," the flag of Japan rose high.

Manager Kuroda and Hitomi cried on the field as much as they could, she wrote. All the pain of before had suddenly turned to joy.

The next year, in May 1927, the woman who had jumped farther than anyone in the world at Gothenburg finally lost, in a sprint at a meet in Japan.

Her opponent was a girl from Wakayama, only fifteen years old.