History

Ancient Japan

We could trace "jiu jitsu" back all the way to at least 2000 B.C. by tracing the origins of martial arts to ancient Egypt. However, we will leave that for another page!

     In Japan, we can trace jiu jitsu back as far as 23 B.C. to the origins of sumo wrestling. This ancient form of wrestling has evolved and has came into it's own as a sport, but before that, it gave birth to the warrior art of jiu jitsu. The bugei, or warriors, of ancient Japan were schooled in various ryu or methods of jiu jitsu depending upon location and which school had established dominance at the time. There has been official documentation of 725 schools of jiu jitsu which were greatly varied in the way that they approached combat. They dealt with weapons as well as empty hand techniques, but jiu jitsu was always considered secondary and supplementary to the bugei's main tools of the trade: weapons of war.

     Jiu jitsu had eventually earned quite a bad reputation for itself. Schools would often battle for supremacy and compete for the local economy. Injuries were frequent and the schools had turned into places where only the toughest and roughest of men could endure. The teaching was often disorganized and didn't follow a logical set of concepts and principles.

Enter Kano

On October 28, 1860 Jigaro Kano was born in the seaside town of Kikage. He was to be a great influence upon Japanese martial arts and change them forever. As Japan was coming into modern times and adopting to European influences and industrialization, Kano yearned for the ancient ways as eagerly as he was absorbing these new influences. At his mid-teenage years he was reaching his full growth at 5'2" and literally a 90 pound weakling. Being so small and frail, he was a perfect target for the bullies that are so common at that age. So, he resolved to turn to jiu jitsu as the art had earned quite a reputation for making young men tough. However, his father forbade him to begin studying jiu jitsu; he viewed it as a thing of the past and of no use. He also thought that jiu jitsu was uncivilized and uncultured and that he would better spend his time learning the arts and other more important subjects.

     So, of course, Jigaro Kano began looking for a teacher. He eventually found one and began studying. In fact, he continued studying until he had studied from many teachers and many ryu of jiu jitsu. His studies had included: Seigo Ryu, Yagyu Ryu, Kito Ryu and Tenshin Shinyo Ryu, which was a fusion of Yoshin Ryu and Shin No Shindo Ryu jiu jitsu. By the age of 21, Kano had became a master of Tenshin Shinyo Ryu jiu jitsu. Kano studied so fervently that he would even wake up screaming jiujitsu words!

     During his studies, Kano met Tsunetoshi Ikubo, a master of Kito Ryu Jiujitsu . Years earlier, Kuninori Suzuki, a master of Kito-ryu, had changed the name of Kito-kumiuchi to Kito-ryu Judo in 1714 . Over time, "Kito-ryu Judo" had slipped into common usage as Kito-ryu ju jitsu, but later the name Kodokan Judo would come from this source. 

     During this time, Kano was finding ways to change, modify and invent within his Jiujitsu training. He had invented new throws and had discovered the underlying concept of what he coined as "kazushi", or off-balancing, as a way of throwing an opponent rather than just leverage. One day, he even threw his master, Ikubo, 3 times. "From now on, you teach me", Ikubo was reported as saying. It was here that Judo was born.

Kano's Revolution

During this time, Kano was studying at the Tokyo Imperial University. When he graduated in 1881 he immediately received an appointment to the Gakushin, a private school for the children of the Japanese elite, teaching literature. In 1882, at the age of 22, Kano took 9 of his private students to the Eishoji temple to set up a class for teaching his Judo, although the training was still more Jiujitsu than Judo. After he started this class is when the name "Kodokan Judo" came into usage. He wanted to use this term to set it apart from the old Jiujitsu and to signify that it was something new and had a deeper philosophy taken from Chinese Taoism.

     When the monks at Eishoji had become tired of the damage that was being done to the temple from the Judo training, Kano built a temporary location next to the temple until moving the group to his own home in 1883.

     In 1884, Kodokan bylaws were drawn up. The Kodokan name was officially established, "taking together all the merits I have acquired from the various schools of jujitsu, and adding my own devices and inventions, I have founded a new system for physical culture, mental training, and winning contests. This I call Kodokan Judo."

     It is interesting to note that Kano had sought to preserve many of the ancient samurai ideals of the Japanese martial arts, but he wanted to weed out the ideals that were not fit for the modern age. One of these was the idea of "sudden death", or Shobu. "Sudden death" was the losing of a contest with one "fatal" blow. These contests promoted too much of a cautious attitude and did not promote the idea of risk taking that would allow creativeness, strategy and tactics to flourish. His contests were based on a 3 point system instead of an "ippon", or one point/sudden death. Unfortunately, during the 1930's, Japanese militarism had attempted to revive the Samurai idealism of sudden death for nationalistic purposes; the idea of complete sacrifice of the individual for the good of the nation. The military imposed upon the Kodokan the one point win system. As Kano had feared, this created a fear of risk taking for fear of losing and still exists today. However, this created a stronger growth of "randori"(free-sparring) in practice.

     The "randori" or free-sparring attitude of Judo was also a unique idea of the time. Kano had witnessed that many of the styles of the time had become a very pale comparison to their former combative selves. During the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate period and the modernization of Japan, competition was looked at as too violent, primitive and even vulgar. The practitioners of the arts of that time viewed their arts as too "deadly" to be fully practiced on a partner or opponent. This attitude was handed down from kenjitsu, the sword fighting arts. Since they could not practice on each other, the perfection of movement was considered to be a test of skill. The kenjitsu masters were the most admired in the Japanese arts, so this attitude was also adopted by the other arts as well as the Jujitsu ryu of the time. This fallacy was also a way to avoid all of the agony, sweat and the overall ordeal of arduous martial art training. This poison is still prevalent today in most martial arts. 

      This promoted the growth of "kata", literally forms,  as the main core of training. Instead of a natural, free competitive attitude of practice, pre-set and idealized movements were taught that were supposed to translate into actual fighting ability. The idea of "Budo" and the image of "Budo" had become a poor substitute of actually experiencing "Budo", the "warriors way".

Judo Makes it's Mark

     Remember that in 1884 the Kodokan by-laws were drawn up and Judo was officially founded. Kano was only 24 years old and had taken all of the jiujitsu training that he had accumulated and developed his own method that he named Kodokan Judo. During this year they held their first tournament.

     In 1885, the Kodokan had their first recorded tournament with the Metropolitan police. This was the first tournament to test this new Judo with ancient Jiujitsu. The was the first of many wins to come.

     In 1886, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police hosted a historic tournament between the Kodokan Judo and Totsuka-ha Yoshin-ryu Jiujitsu, the school considered to be the strongest fighting school in Japan at the time. Although other masters were included, the Totsuka-ha was the school to beat as they were greatly known for thoroughly beating the other styles.

     The Kodokan lost two matches, drew one and won the remaining twelve matches! This small little group of the existing Jiujitsu ryu at the time had beaten the recognized masters in Japan. Martial arts were changed forever.

Judo Makes Changes

   In 1893, Kano was able to build a place solely for his Kodokan Judo. During this time, Judo began to change it's approach to ground or mat work techniques. Up until this time, Kodokan Judo had mainly focused on throwing because of Kano's own personal preference for throws. Kano was now 5' 2" and 165 pounds, he was very strong and powerful from his Judo training, but preferred to not go to the ground. Students were left to train their mat work on their own. Before this, jiujitsu would mainly put the bottom person in a face down position for defense. Kano had them start to lie face up so that they would have their arms and legs for defense and counter-attack.

     A ranking system had also started to come into use. Previously, Jiujitsu either had no rank or just had varying degrees of teaching certification such as "beginning teacher" and "advanced teacher". Kano saw this as being very disorganized and left little incentive for a student to continue training without goals to achieve. Non-black belt grades then were purely representative of technical levels to achieve until sufficient material had been mastered to be considered a true student of Judo. This was the first Dan level, or black belt. The black belt, then, was considered to be a grade of beginning, not a finish as most people view it. When you have achieved the black belt, now you are ready to truly learn the art. Everything else until now has just been to get you ready so that you can now learn. In the beginning, the lower level belts consisted of 3 white belts, 3 brown belts and 3 black belts. Eventually it came to include colors as well as 10 grades of black. Note that this is the beginning of all belt systems in the martial arts.

     All was not always great with Judo, however, as in 1900 the Kodokan suffered a school defeat from the Fusen Ryu Jiujitsu. Fusen Ryu had specialized in grappling techniques, or ne-waza, and this was the nature of the tournament. The grappling had out shined the throwing of the Kodokan. Kano saw their weakness and typically asked the headmaster of the Fusen Ryu to share with him their core syllabus. He also sought out a similar style, Jikishin Ryu Jiujitsu, to add to the Kodokan syllabus. From this moment on, the Kodokan began to incorporate more ne-waza into the training.

Jigaro Kano

     In 1908, Kano was the first Oriental member to be inducted into the International Olympic Committee. In 1911, he created the Japan Amateur Athletic Association and in the same year both Judo and Kendo (the sword fighting sport) were adopted into the Japanese school system. During this time, Jiujitsu was fading from the Japanese culture. Kano eventually even said, "eventually Judo replaced ju jitsu in Japan, and no one any longer speaks of jujitsu as a contemporary art in Japan, although the word has survived overseas."

     As such, Kano felt that he had a responsibility to preserve some of the ancient Jiujitsu techniques since this was the foundation of his Judo and he felt that he owed these arts everything. Kano became a historian and the Kodokan had become a place of eduacation. He started to create Kata, or pre-set forms to preserve many of these techniques for historical purposes. He himself had studied Seigo Ryu, and Yagyu Ryu,  as well as his Kito Ryu and Tenshin shinyo Ryu. Tenshin shinyo Ryu was, itself, a fushion of Yoshin Ryu and Shin No Shindo Ryu ju jitsu. In addition, Yoshin Ryu was Kano's chief asstistant, Yamashita's specialty. Tenshinshinyo Ryu incorporated striking, throwing, holding, and choking techniques as well as joint locks and aiki-type movements. Training also included study of eighteen battlefield weapons.

Later, Takeuchi Ryu masters helped with the development of the Kodokan syllabus. Takeuchi Ryu itself was a derivative of Daito Ryu Jiujitsu. As Daito Ryu itself evolved into subsequent arts, Kano sent students such as Mochizuki to Sokaku Takeda and Kenji Tomiki to Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, to bring back developments that they had made.

     The Kodokan had become THE source of martial art knowledge in Japan.

Kodokan Judo Readdresses Grappling

     In 1914, the All Japan Special High School  championships were started at Kyoto Imperial University. These championships focused on grappling techniques, or ne-waza, and the schools that participated became so proficient at the matwork that they earned the name "Kosen Judo" or grappling Judo. In 1925, this form of Judo was becoming so predominant and popular that  Kano began to see throwing techniques as disappearing from the syllabus of effective Judo skills since matches would usually go straight to the ground and be decided there. Judo rules were changed to specifically require that all techniques had to begin from a standing throwing technique, or tachi waza, and if a competitor pulled his opponent down without even trying to throw, the opponent would be declared the automatic winner.

However, Kano could not deny the effectiveness of Kosen Judo, and saw a need for specialists to be encouraged in it's growth and development. So, the Seven Universities Tournament, which exists in  Japan to this day, has been exempt from this 1925 Kodokan rule change. The Kosen Judo students were pretty hardcore and considered it shameful to tap or surrender. A match would have to continue until the submission technique that was being used was taken to its intended goal. This attitude continued into Gracie Jiujitsu and some schools of BJJ, whose proponents would sometimes rather have an arm broken than to tap, which is not surprising since the founding instructors learned Judo during this pre-1925 period. Kosen Judo exists to this day in Japan in University tournaments as well as in Gracie and Brazilian Jiujitsu.

Judo Takes on the World

Kano's election to the International Olympic Committee in 1908 took him abroad on many trips on Olympic business and allowed him to teach and spread Judo wherever he went.

     Kano's chief assistant, Yamashita, went to America in 1903 where he taught at Harvard University, the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, and taught Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1904, Tsunejiro Tomita and Mitsuyo Maeda followed Yamashita to America. Tomita taught at Columbia University, while Maeda traveled to Europe, and Central and South America.

     Other instructors went to different countries all over the globe spreading their love of Judo.

Judo Goes to Brazil Next Page

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