In its early years, the race had a rotating venue format, but these races are contained within the Fukuoka history as they all shared a common organiser and sponsor (the
Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese national newspaper). The inaugural edition was launched in 1947 as the and was held in
Kumamoto. The 1951 was the first of the race series to be held in Fukuoka. Foreign runners were invited for the first time in 1954 and
Reinaldo Gorno of Argentina subsequently became the first non-Japanese winner. The competition was renamed as the the following year and Finland's
Veikko Karvonen became the first European victor. In 1956 the race reverted to a national race between Japanese men, but foreign runners were reintroduced for later editions. The 1959 edition saw Fukuoka instated was the permanent host city for the marathon race and Japanese runner
Kurao Hiroshima became the first two-time winner that year. Water stations for runners were introduced along the course for the first time in 1961. The last race to be held outside of Fukuoka came in 1963, when a special pre-Olympic edition was held in
Tokyo as a way of testing the marathon course for the
1964 Tokyo Olympics. Recognising the Fukuoka Marathon's increasingly international nature, the event was renamed in 1966 to the .
Frank Shorter had three straight wins in 1971 to 1973 and a fourth win came in 1974, the same year that the race took on its current title of the . In 1980,
Toshihiko Seko won in a time of 2:09:45 hours, just four seconds ahead of
Takeshi So. This represented the first time that two men had completed the marathon distance under two hours and ten minutes at the same competition. The second world record of the competition's history came in 1981 and it was again an Australian runner, this time
Robert de Castella, whose time of 2:08:18 hours became the new world standard. On March 26, 2021, the
Japan Association of Athletics Federations, newspaper
Asahi Shimbun, and broadcast partners
Kyushu Asahi Broadcasting and
TV Asahi announced that the 75th Fukuoka International Marathon would be its last edition citing difficulties in continuing the event such as increasing operating costs and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, on March 15, 2021, the JAAF and the Fukuoka Prefectural Government announced that a successor race would be held in December of that year "maintaining [the] history and tradition" of the original championship. The competition has hosted the men's marathon championship race numerous times: it first held the event in 1955 and then hosted the race on a biennial basis from 1963 to 1997. It later hosted the
national championship race once every three years, on a rotational basis alongside the Lake Biwa and
Tokyo Marathons. == Qualification ==