I just received a book written by Toshihiko Seko a couple of days ago. I'm at the last chapter now. He talks about the kind of training he did for early in his career, his prime (Tokyo marathon 1983), and for track National 10000m record (27:43) AND the reason why he did the way he did it. One of the best "gold mine for Japanese marathon training" book I've ever read. Another one is a book by Koide.
One of the advantages in Japan is, as much as these things are companie's secret (because of the corporate team system), coaches still get together and talk about it. Coach Suzuki, coac of Tosa and Shibui, is a good friend of coach Kawagoe, whose team, Shiseido, won the national ekiden relay championships last month with Suzuki's team close second. I sent him a congratulation message. He replied and said that he and Suzuki often get together and talk about training over sake. "It was great to pay him back by beating his team," he said. Most of these coaches, including Koide, have been influenced by Nakamura who coached Seko and, yeah, he was a huge fan of Lydiardism. I got to know coach kawagoe last year at Boston where his runner, Shimahara, finished 5th. Knowing that I'm the Lydiard guy (we both contributed articles on Lydiardism for the Japanese running magazine after Arthur passed away), he came to me and introduced himself to me. We went to a coffee shop (Starback by Copley) and talked about training for a couple of hours. I get blown off by a high school coach here...