Japan will be one of the Olympic Movement's most important partners for the next seven years; so the appearance in paperback of a book outlining the stories of the country's greatest female Olympic athletes is timely.

Robin Kietlinski's earnest but digestible volume* puts the attainments of these athletes in the context of the development of Japanese society over the past 150 or so years, explaining how attitudes to sport, and women's proper place in it, were gradually transformed.

But it was the stories of the women themselves, trailblazers nearly all, that most held my attention.

Well-known as they may be in Japan, they deserve a wider international circulation, and may very well get it in the run-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

One athlete whose story may be particularly widely disseminated in coming weeks and months is Seiko Hashimoto, a speed skater-cum-cyclist, who performed at a remarkable seven Olympic Games - Summer and Winter - in the 1980s and 1990s.

Hashimoto subsequently went into politics and is now one of a number of individuals being touted as potential candidates to be the next Governor of Tokyo, following the resignation of Naoki Inose.

Should she get that job, then some of the biographical details relayed by Kietlinski would quickly be broadcast far and wide - starting with her date of birth, October 5, 1964, "just as the [first] Tokyo Olympics were getting underway".

Kietlinski goes on to quote from a 1996 essay of Hashimoto's that explains how the Olympics has marked her life from her earliest days.

"My name," she wrote, "was given to me by my father, who was so moved by the beauty of the seika, the Olympic flame, that he gave me the name 'Seiko' (using the same Chinese character for 'sei').

"Being given this name, it was always my dream to become an Olympic athlete."

In spite of her many appearances, Hashimoto's sole Olympic medal came at Albertville in 1992, where she won bronze in the 1500 metres speed skating.

Seiko Hashimoto competed in seven Olympics, representing Japan in speed skating and cycling ©Allsport/Getty Images

Perhaps my favourite passage of the book deals with the first Olympic gold medal won by a Japanese woman: this was claimed at the notorious Berlin Games of 1936 by swimmer Hideko Maehata in the 200m breaststroke.

As Kietlinski explains, the race was almost as significant in the history of Japanese broadcasting as of Japanese sport, as it was among the first major events to be covered live via radio satellite.

It was a close race, and the translation she provides of the commentary delivered by a journalist called Sansei Kasai gives a wonderfully understated impression of the nationalistic fervour that must have gripped Japan as Maehata drove her aching limbs desperately through the water.

"Maehata's lead is small, it's very small!" the commentary runs.

"Maehata! Go for it Maehata! [Repeated eleven times]

"Maehata is in the lead! [Repeated six times]

"Five metres left to go! Four metres left! Three metres, two metres.

"Maehata is ahead!

"Maehata has won! [Repeated eighteen times]"

Japanese Women and Sport - Beyond Baseball and Sumo by Robin Kietlinski is a fascinating insight into some of the country's most successful female Olympians ©Bloomsbury

The book also covers the heroines of the 1964 Games, the Japanese women's volleyball gold medallists, who became known as the "witches of the Orient", but whose triumph was reward in part for subjecting themselves to the regime of a merciless coach.

There is sadness too.

I knew something of the achievement of Kinue Hitomi, who won the first Olympic medal awarded to a Japanese woman, a silver, at the Amsterdam Games of 1928 in the 800m race that was deemed so gruelling the event did not reappear on the Olympic schedule until 1960.

But I did not know that she died in 1931, after contracting pneumonia, aged just 24, or that she had to put up with much fascination over her supposedly unfeminine appearance as a result of her robust physique.

Kinue Hitomi won an Olympic silver medal in the 800m at Amsterdam 1928 but died only three years later ©Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Equally sad is the story of hurdler Ikuko Yoda, whose eye-catching pre-race ritual involved a broom, headstands, a white headband and white mentholated cream applied to both temples.

In spite of this preamble, Yoda could manage only fifth place in her Olympic final, and "had an incredibly difficult time handling the fact that she had trained so hard and did not come away with a medal".

Kietlinski goes on: "Tragically, Yoda never seemed to recover mentally from the devastation she felt after falling to her competitors at the Olympic Games."

In 1983, she took her own life.

She was 45.

*Japanese Women and Sport – Beyond Baseball and Sumo by Robin Kietlinski, published by Bloomsbury Academic, price £16.99 ($28.01/€20.30)

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. To follow him on Twitter click here.