We would like to express our sincere thanks to the people and communities in Japan and overseas who reached out to us in our hour of need, and are still reaching out to us as we seek to recover from the recent disaster.

Naturally, the Kobe Marathon is about individuals running for themselves. But more than that, we want to make this marathon about running for others.

At the heart of this idea is the feeling of interconnectedness and community. The productive efforts of Hyogo and Kobe, which led to their recovery, and the action of providing experience and lessons from the earthquake to disaster victims around the world, are based on the idea that everyone is interconnected. That both joy and sadness are to be shared as well.

Our desire to warmly welcome visitors to Hyogo and Kobe springs from an awareness of both interconnectedness and community.
An additional bonus is that those running and those supporting the runners can also share in the joy of completing the distance and achieving a goal. People who are strangers can feel interconnected.
We want to make the marathon still more powerful and make it an event that sends an unequivocal message of support to the people and regions who have suffered so much in this disaster.