JAJ41: Hitomi Kinue

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Today, I want to bring you a short story about a pretty amazing woman. A woman you’ve probably never heard of, unless you are a HUGE Olympic junkie. It’s a story with a tragic ending, but a happy coda. I want to tell you about Hitomi Kinue, the first Japanese woman to medal in the Olympics.

Kinue - that’s her given name. Hitomi is her family name - was born in the Mitsu district of Okayama prefecture, in western Japan on New Year’s day 1907. Her father was a wealthy farmer, growing rice and Igusa, the type of rush plant used in making tatami mats. It seems, from reading about her life, that she grew up certainly monetarily privileged, but also in a loving supportive household, which was made up of her parents, grandmother, one older sister and herself.

By all accounts, she was something of a tomboy, preferring to play with her male classmates in primary school - running around and playing sports. That isn’t to say she was a bad student. Far from it. She was also really bright - top of her class, even. She was apparently really good at writing tanka, a form of poetry.

After graduating from primary school, her parents decided it was best that she continue on to secondary school - something of a rarity for girls in Japan in the 1920s. She went to a girls school that was about 6km - so, what 3 and a half, 4 miles from her home. Which she of course walked. Her school valued both the “traditional” elements of girls education - so poetry and probably home ec type stuff AND very importantly, physical education. In particular, the girls at her school played volleyball and tennis. Kinue, not surprisingly, excelled at sports, especially tennis. At some point, she and her partner lost a match, and it made her upset. She went out and bought a new, high quality racket - well, probably her father bought one for her - and it’s stuff like this that shows her family was very supportive of her.

Kinue would practice every day until 6pm. Initially her parents didn’t like her being outside so much because she was getting really tanned - in Japan, dark skin was seen as a sign of being a laborer. But Kinue didn’t care, and she got better at tennis and the next year, when she was in the big prefectural tournament, her father came to cheer her on, deeply tanned skin and all. And she and her partner won that year.

It was also during secondary school that she was introduced to athletics. You know, track and field. And she set a Japanese record for the running long jump. I say running, because this is the era when the standing long jump is still a thing. And Kinue was good at that discipline, too.

After graduating from secondary school, she went on to the newly opened Nikaido School of Physical Education - a women’s post-secondary school that stressed physical education and would go on to become Japanese Women's College of Physical Education. The founder of the school - Nikaido Tokuyo is another woman worth talking about some day in a short episode.

So, Hitomi Kinue entered Nikaido School of Physical Education in 1924 and she really started traveling around Japan to enter all these national athletics competitions in all sorts of disciplines. And winning pretty much all of them. Pretty much always in record setting ways. More than a few of them in world record setting ways.

It was while she was a student at Nikaido that she set the world record for women’s triple jump with a jump of 10 meters 33 centimeters. And the world record for javelin - 26meters 37cm. She would go on to better her triple jump record two more times while a student. 11m35 and then 11m62.

After graduating from Nikaido, she would get a job at the Osaka Mainichi Newspaper in the sports department - not surprising. And she continued to attend track meets and dominate pretty much anything and everything she tried. Long jump? National record. Shot put? National record. Long jump? National record. 100m hurdles? National record. 4x100 relay? Yeah. National record.

In the fall of 1926, Hitomi Kinue attended the second Women’s World Games in Sweden. The only athlete attending from Japan, she traveled alone on the Trans-siberian railroad to Moscow, where a Japanese reporter from her newspaper was working in the company’s Moscow bureau accompanied her to Sweden. At the games, she competed in 6 events. She came home with 4 medals and an honorary prize.

Her events and medals in the Women’s games? 6th in the 250 meter dash. 5th in the 60m dash. Bronze in the 100 yard dash. Silver in the discus. Gold in the standing long jump. And gold in the running long jump. In world record setting fashion to boot. She earned the most individual points which is why she got an honorary award from the International Women’s sports Federation.

And it was at this time - after seeing a high level international competition for the first time that she realized the importance of working with a dedicated coach and training year round. What!? That’s right. She went to the second Women’s World Games having basically done all her own training. And she still kinda dominated. And now she wants to work with a coach. I guess 4 medals in 6 events wasn’t enough.

In 1927 and early 1928, she continued her domination of Japanese athletics. And world records. Let’s just list her records from 1927-1928: 200m; Standing long jump; 100m something like 3 times; 400m; long jump. So when it was time to select the team for the 1928 Olympics to be held in Amsterdam, she was an obvious choice.

Hitomi Kinue went to Amsterdam intending to compete in either 3 or 4 events. It’s not exactly clear to me, and I’ll get to that in a minute. She planned to compete in the 100m, discus, high jump and 800m. In 1928, there were only 5 events for women in the athletics competition, and one was a relay - the 4x100. Hitomi entered all the events for women, though save the 100m, all her best events were not part of the games - no triple jump or long jump of any sort. Just as a side note - the very first Olympic gold won by a Japanese athlete was won by Oda Mikio in the men’s triple jump on the same day Hitomi had her greatest Olympic success.

In the end though, she choose not to compete in the high jump or discus, and she didn’t have a great 100m race. She finished 4th in her semifinal and didn’t go on to the final. Which left her with the 800.

In the preliminary heats, Hitomi finished 2nd to Lina Radke. So she qualified for the final in the event, which was scheduled for the next day, August 2nd. And in the final, Hitomi Kinue, who had never run the 800 in competition before - remember, she was really a sprint specialist - she got second place, again to Lina Radke. Radke won the race in world record time. And so Hitomi Kinue became the first Japanese woman to win an olympic medal. The first woman from Asia, in fact. And it was on the same day that Oda Mikio won his gold in the triple jump.

Now, according to one single source, which I haven’t been able to verify anywhere else, she wasn’t even really planning to run the 800, but the Olympics at that time allowed athletes to join a race at the last second. Which makes for a good story. However, my guess as to what really happened was that if an athlete was good enough to run in one event, they could enter anything else without qualifying. Because Hitmoi hadn’t run the 800 before competitively. So that’s what I think the real story is. But it certainly makes it sound better and more like a movie. Which is a big part of why I think it’s incorrect. But still - this was a race Hitomi was not a specialist in AT all.

And one more sidebar about the race - according to some contemporaneous reports - reports that were incorrect, by the by - many of the women after the race were just absolutely spent and it prompted the IOC to remove the 800 from women’s athletics until 1960. It was just too much for the delicate flowers of femininity to endure. Or some other sexist, patriarchal BS. I mean, it’s obvious they were just winded AFTER RUNNING A RACE IN WORLD RECORD SETTING TIME.

Just to quote from a short paper from Lynne Emery from Cal State Polytechnic University: “A thorough examination of the evidence including eye-witness accounts showed that there were nine women in the 800 meter finals, all nine completed the race and several bettered the existing world’s record.” and “Contrary to popular opinion, the runners did not fall on the track but several moved to the infield to lie down since they were not only winded but also disappointed at not winning. The removal of the race from the Olympic Games by the IAAF was unjustified based on the evidence presented. Because of this race, adding women’s track events to the Olympic program has been a slow and difficult process.”

Man, men suck. And I’d bet a fair amount that not a single member of the IOC was able to run 800 meters in 2 minutes and 16.8 seconds - the winning time of the women’s race. But I digress.

So, after Amsterdam, she continued to be absolutely dominant - and a Jill of all trades on the track and in the field. More world records would come in 1929. 217 points in the triathlon - not the modern Triathlon. The 1920s triathlon was the 100m, high jump and javelin. A new 200m world record. Same for the 100 and 60m races, too.

In 1930, she went to the Women’s World Games again - this time in Prague, and this time with 5 other athletes. Another long jump gold, along with a silver in the Triathlon and bronzes in the 60m and javelin. And then she and the others went on a tour around Europe, though Hitomi wasn’t feeling well and was running a fever. Finally, she went back to Japan, where the public was less enthusiastic about her feats than in previous years, probably because she didn’t do as well. And I’m using the biggest scare quotes ever - she still won 4 medals, just this time two were bronze, not gold, and she was only the 2nd best individual all around athlete this time, rather than the best. Man, people suck.

But, yeah, she got back after touring Europe for half a year, and, despite not feeling great, went right back to work. She was out speaking in public, visiting sponsors and traveling around Japan. While still not really recovered from her trip from Europe. When she had had a fever while touring and competing.

In March of 1931, she was admitted to a hospital in Osaka - under the name Karui Naoko apparently - she was, after all, still something of a celebrity, even if people weren’t as excited as they had been earlier in her career. She was diagnosed with pneumonia, and it got pretty serious. She would stay in hospital for months. The people who knew her best would come and visit - Nikaido Tokuyo, Oda Mikio - and they could all tell that Hitomi Kinue was in a serious fight for her life. And sadly, it was a fight she would lose. On August 2nd, 1931, three years to the day since she had won silver at the Amsterdam Olympics, Hitomi Kinue passed away.

In the following days, both the newspaper where she worked in Osaka, and then at her family home in Okayama, two services were held and more than a thousand attended each.

Hitomi Kinnue was only 24 years old when she died, having won a silver medal in the Olympics, three gold, two silver, and three bronze medals in the Women’s World Games, and set something like 10 world records in just a few short years.

Who knows what she would have done in 1932 Los Angeles, where she could have tested herself against another of the greatest athletes ever - Babe Didrikson.

And you know how I said there’s a happy coda to the story? Well, Hitomi’s medals were all donated to the war effort in the late 30s and early 40s. “Wait a minute!” I hear you saying, “that’s not a happy coda!” I agree, that’s not happy. But that’s not the coda. It would be more accurate to say it was thought that all her medals had been donated to the war effort. And of course, when I say “donated,” it wasn’t exactly a willing donation. Right? Well, most of them had been “donated”. Except for one.

In 2000, her silver medal from the Amsterdam games was found. It had been wrapped in some bedding and bed clothes that she had used, presumably at the end of her life, maybe? But someone - her parents I’m guessing? Hid the medal in her bedding. Presumably even the imperial wartime government wasn’t going to mess with the memories of a national hero. And that is the happy coda.

And that’s the story of the first Japanese woman to win a medal in the Olympics.

Please remember to subscribe, rate and review the podcast wherever it is you cast your pods. This podcast is on most of the major platforms - Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora - probably some others. If it’s not on your favorite platform, let me know and I’ll look into getting it on that platform as well. You can find the twitter for this podcast @justanothercast. You can email the show at justanotherjerkpodcast@gmail.com. And you can find all that information on the website- tinyurl.com/jerkpod. That’s all for me. I’m Jonathan Isaacson, and I’m out. Peace.