The first stop of the World Major Marathons, the “Tokyo Marathon,” kicked off grandly on March 1, attracting a total of 39,000 runners from home and abroad. The atmosphere at the site was originally full of excitement. However, along the racecourse, serious controversies regarding spectator etiquette broke out. Many Chinese people frantically waved the national flag of China by the track, and some even sat down to obstruct the runners, drawing strong condemnation from Japanese netizens. Local police were forced to intervene multiple times, forcibly removing troublemakers.
According to a report by the Liberty Times, the Tokyo Marathon route starts from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku and ends at Tokyo Station, passing through prime downtown areas such as Nihonbashi, Asakusa Kaminarimon, Ginza, Shinagawa, and Hibiya. Posts and videos released on the X platform by Chiba Prefecture city councilor “Fujihara Chikako” show several people holding up large Chinese flags on both sides of the course, not only waving massive flags and shouting loudly, blocking the runners’ view, but also one man holding a Chinese flag who suddenly sat next to the course, apparently engaging in a sit-in protest which posed a safety hazard to the runners. These various chaotic acts soon led Japanese police to intervene and stop them.
After the footage was exposed, it quickly went viral online. Japanese netizens fiercely criticized, saying, “Chinese people are really annoying,” “I saw the Chinese flag. This isn’t just a simple sit-in protest—they’re waving flags and probably obstructing the runners’ progress,” “Reckless behaviors repeated year after year,” “Don’t turn sporting events into political propaganda,” “If you love China so much that you want to display the Chinese flag even in Japan, then why not just go back to China instead of moving to Japan? Those Chinese who come to Japan and say things like ‘little Japan’ or express anti-Japanese sentiments should also just go back to China. They’re anti-Japan and love China, yet still want to move to Japan—what a contradiction. Honestly, I just can’t understand these people.”