Judo
is many things to different people. It's a sport, an art, a discipline, a recreational and
social activity, a fitness program, a means of self-defense or combat. It is all of these
and more.
Judo is from the fighting system of feudal Japan.
The inventor of judo was Jigoro Kano. He was born on the
October 28th 1860 in the village of Mikage, Japan. He was small and not very
strong. He studied the ju-jutsu in three different schools: the Kito-Ryu, the
Tenshin-Shinyo-Ryu, and the Nippo-Ryu ("Ryu" means school). Jigoro
was looking for a new way of self-defence. His small size forced him to look for different ways to defeat stronger men. He needed to use their strength against them. He invented the Nippon-Den-Kodokan-Judo.
JUDO that literally means 'the gentle way'. In 1882 he
opened his first school and named it the Kodokan.
"Kodo" means 'search for truth' and "Kan" means 'gathering'.
In 1889, Jigoro Kano left Japan and went on tour in Europe. He went to study
western education and promote Judo. That year, judo became an required subject in Japanese
schools. Yamashita, one of his best students, was sent to America in 1903. He opened
a judo school which quickly became extremely popular.
President Theodore Roosevelt himself visited the school, and became an
enthusiastic student. Jigoro Kano continued to give judo lessons all his life. In 1938 he
went to Canada for a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, concerning
the ubout Tokyo games.
Jigoro Kano died on the 4th of May 1938, during the return trip.
He was 77yrs old. Jigoro's son Risei was then too young to run the school, therefore
his nephew Nango Jiro was entrusted with the task until Risei replaced him in 1946.
(For a great one page history of JUDO; http://www.judoinfo.com/jhist.htm)
Judo was introduced to the world through the Olympics in 1964 and today is practiced by millions of people throughout the world.
People practice Judo to compete, to stay fit, and to develop their self-confidence.
But most of all, people do Judo just for the fun of it.
