Everyone has Unexplored Intrinsic Abilities

After retiring from his job as an elementary school teacher when he was 60, Tanaka took up competitive running. Before that he’d been the one making the kids compete on school sports days and in P.E. classes. About six months before he retired he read about masters track and field in the newspaper. The story reminded him of how he’d run when he was in school, and he decided to give it a go.

He started training alone early in the morning in the empty schoolyard, and in the summer of the year he turned 60 ran his first race at a meet in Aomori. Running the 100 m, he was stunned to see the back of an athlete two years older than him who’d started next to him.

He trained regularly and began to set records, and at age 70 won 400 m gold at the World Masters Championships in Australia. “It was like I had opened a box and found treasure inside,” he says. “I wondered if I was really good enough to be accepted as part of the sport at the international level, whether it was all a dream.”

At the age of 71 Tanaka set a PB of 13.44 for 100 m. It’s normal for the body to lose muscular strength, running ability, and overall physical condition as it ages. “But in my case I was still improving,” he says. “Why? I had thought it was because I was training well, but lately I’ve started thinking about it differently. I think it’s because I had latent ability that I’d never developed, and that when I started working out regularly it came into bloom. If I hadn’t started running, my life would have ended without me having found out what I could really do. I’m really glad that I did, and the confidence I gained has kept me going and led to the results I’ve produced. I think everyone has unexplored intrinsic abilities that have the potential to flower. That’s why I tell everyone they should knock on the door inside themselves and take on whatever they find on the other side.”

After a few years of smooth sailing, Tanaka was forced to take two years off when he was 73 to get treatment for an Achilles tendon injury, shingles, and heart problems. “I wondered if it was all over,” he remembers, “but I told myself, ‘No, you can still achieve something,’ and started over.”

Tanaka lives with his wife Kazuko. He wakes up at 4:00 a.m., reads the newspaper for an hour, then takes a nap until 7:00 a.m. In the morning he stretches and does weight training at the indoor track, and after lunch and a nap he does record-keeping work and does cross-country running and walking with groups he organizes. He gets into bed at 8:00 p.m. and watches the news, then goes to sleep around midnight.

Since turning 90, Tanaka has started to feel the effects of aging. “But I still want to keep at it until I’m 95,” he says. “My friends say they want to run a relay with me after I turn 95 so we can go for the world record. Nobody has set a relay world record in the 95-99 age group yet, so we all have an agreement not to get sick or die before that even if we have an accident. As you get older your body changes, but we want to minimize that as much as we can. The most important thing you can do is regular movement, every day.”

Tanaka and his wife live on the 13th floor of a large apartment building. Whenever he goes out he takes the stairs down instead of using the elevator. When he comes home he climbs the stairs up to the 4th floor without any problems. He puts a lot of effort into cleaning the floor with a mop, which helps his hips and legs. He leaves himself notes so that he won’t forget things. “I see these things as helping slow down the aging process,” he says. “That process happens at a different rate for everyone. How do you put the brakes on it? I don’t know if my brakes are that strong, but I’m pushing on them as hard as I can. But I’m not really trying to fight against getting old. It’s more like I’m trying to come in for a soft landing, like a glider.”

One of the main questions Tanaka always gets is about what he eats. “I don’t have any kind of special diet,” he says. “I just keep eating the way I have my whole life. The key to staying healthy is moving your body, talking to other people, and enjoying each day.” It’s also important, he says, to set goals. The key thing is to set ones that are achievable but not guaranteed to succeed.

In August the World Masters Track and Field Championships will happen in Sweden, and the dates are already circled on Tanaka’s calendar. “I’ve never had any problems with jet lag,” he laughs. “I said 95 was my goal, but to be honest lately I’ve been wondering the tiniest bit what kind of records I could set at 100. I just need to keep staying healthy. They say that the elderly today are 5 to 10 years younger than they were 10 or 20 years ago.”

The Japan Gerontological Society made that announcement in 2015 based on the results of its analysis of the physical and intellectual functions and overall condition of people aged 65 and older. In 2017, in conjunction with the Japan Geriatrics Society it proposed raising the definition of elderly from 65+ to 75+.  Age 90+ would be called “super elderly.” Annual results in scoring on physical testing done by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology show that the scored of those in the 65+ are trending upward, confirming Tanaka’s suggestion that the elderly are getting younger.