MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY MINIMUM EFFORT - Kelly Crigger

JUDO
MAXIMUM
EFFICIENCY
MINIMUM
EFFORT
Judo is still a practical martial art
by KELLY CRIGGER
// PHOTOS COURTESY THE KODOKAN INSTITUTE
The founder of Kodokan
Judo, Jigoro Kano.
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JUDO
“Your Jiu-Jitsu is no good here.”
If T-shirts with snappy sayings had been fashionable in 1880, Jigoro
Kano would have stood at the gate of Eishoji temple proudly brandishing
this phrase across his chest. After studying several different styles
of Jiu-Jitsu, Kano took the best parts of each, added his own principles
of throwing and off-balancing, and founded Judo. Within a few years,
he wiped his mats with Jiu-Jitsu pupils and indirectly spawned two
more martial arts that have had a lasting effect on MMA. And that
wasn’t even his day job.
The Kid Can’t Sit Still
A history of Judo is essentially the history of its
founder, Jigoro Kano, and the conditions under which
the art was formed. He was born into a sake-brewing
family during a time of great change in Japan. It was
six years after Admiral Perry’s steamships had entered
Tokyo Bay and proved the futility of the feudal system
to the Japanese people. By the time Kano was eight
years old, his country had endured a revolution that
deposed the ruling Shogunate and reinstated Emperor
Meiji. His formative years were filled with excitement
and a burgeoning curiosity about the world beyond
the seas, which the Shoguns had defiantly guarded
the population against for three centuries. His teenage
years were a tornado of new social and intellectual
changes that fueled his desire to know more—a characteristic
that would define his life.
Despite being a government employee at a time
when the government was crumbling, Kano’s father
wasn’t destitute. He ensured that his kids were well
educated by Neo-Confucian scholars and European
private schools. Thus Jigoro, the youngest of three, wasn’t a stereotypical
street-tough candidate for the title of “pioneer of fighting.”
But bullies are a staple of any society, and since Kano was a
scrawny five-foot-two, and the very definition of a ninety-pound
weakling, he was easy prey. Fortunately, the youngster didn’t take
kindly to playing the role of victim, and he dedicated himself
to learning self-defense despite his father’s protestations (Jiu-Jitsu
was known for developing aggressive youth).
Kano enrolled in college at Tokyo Imperial University, where
he became absorbed in academia. He loved learning and didn’t
limit it to the classroom, especially when it came to the ancient
ways that were dying out so rapidly under a blossoming Japanese
intellectual society that craved everything western. Oddly
enough, Jiu-Jitsu was being maintained at the time by osteopaths
(sometimes called “bonesetters”), so Kano sought out a doctor
who could teach him how to stop getting his ass kicked. Unfortunately,
Kano chose Jiu-Jitsu masters who had a bad habit of dying.
His first instructor, Hachinosuke Fukuda, met an untimely
demise shortly after Kano walked through his door, so you would
think Iso Masatomo would have kept young Kano out. He didn’t,
and died shortly thereafter.
Kano found a new school and discovered that moving around
like an Army brat had its advantages. The constant upheaval from
school to school gave him an opportunity to compare styles and
determine what worked and what didn’t. In the waning days of
the nineteenth century, Jiu-Jitsu was taught in two forms: kata, or
rigid form, and randori, which meant “free form,” similar to what
we would call open mat grappling today. Fukuda’s Tenjin Shinyoryu
style stressed randori over kata, and favored actual practice
over rigid forms. Masatomo’s style stressed free-form grappling as
well, but he was also a master of striking vital areas. Kano’s third
teacher was Iikubo Tsunetoshi, who taught him Kito-ryu Jiu-Jitsu,
as well as the throwing techniques for which Judo would eventually
become renowned. Kano didn’t stop there. When he repeatedly
lost to a larger student in his dojo and needed a way to compensate
for his smaller stature, he added Sumo wrestling moves to
Students of the
Kodokan Judo clan
assemble before
Jigoro Kano.
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JUDO
his repertoire. It was his open mind and willingness to try whatever
worked that formed the basis of Judo, which was technically
the first mixed martial art. But he wasn’t there just yet.
I Did It My Way
In only four years Kano was licensed to teach Jiu-Jitsu and,
in 1882, at just twenty-two years old, he felt the time had come
to teach on his own. The precocious youth took nine students
and twelve tatami mats to Eishoji Buddhist temple, in Kamakura,
to teach his reformed style of Jiu-Jitsu. Kano focused his teachings
on breaking his opponent’s posture before moving in for
the throw—an unheard-of technique at the time. “The transition
from Jiu-Jitsu to Judo was made slowly but surely,” says author
Andy Adams, “although it is difficult to pinpoint the day when
what that handful of students were learning was no longer Jiu-
Jitsu, but Judo.” Symbolically it was the day he tossed his former
master, Tsunetoshi, around the dojo like a couch pillow during a
randori match.
Two years later, he had his own school, with its own set of bylaws.
Kano would later write, “By taking together all the good
points I had learned of the various schools and adding thereto my
own inventions and discoveries, I devised a new system for physical
culture and moral training. This I call Kodokan Judo.”
Ju means “pliancy” and do means “the way,” which some
have translated as “the gentle way.” Kano’s Judo blended the pinning
and choking techniques of Tenjin Shinyo-ryu Jiu-Jitsu, the
throwing techniques of Kito-ryu, and some Sumo wrestling into
a unique martial art. The revolutionary part of it was kuzushi,
or off-balancing. Judo’s core was to use an opponent’s weight
against him to disrupt his balance and throw him to the ground.
There he would be vulnerable to a pin, choke, or joint lock. Kuzushi
led to an efficiency of effort, and that efficiency led to a
superior technique that enabled a smaller man to defeat a larger
one. Kano found his motto: “The maximum efficiency with min -
imal effort.”
His Judo was taught mostly via randori (free exercise under
contest conditions: throwing, pinning, choking, and joint locks),
although kata (form or prearranged exercises: hitting, kicking,
weapons) was also part of the curriculum. Randori promoted cre -
ativity, free thinking, and free movement. Kata was formulaic,
embodying the Shogun-era view of education as indoctrination,
not the Meiji-era appreciation for discovery. It’s a teaching style,
seen in almost any dojo today, in which an instructor teaches a
move and then allows his students ample time to practice it with
a partner. Judo also embodied the core belief that experience was
more important than strength or power, so an older, wiser judo -
ka (practitioner of Judo) could defeat a stronger, faster student.
But Kano didn’t limit his art to a simple means of self-defense.
He saw in it a way to make people and society better
through the three pillars of Judo: self-defense, physical culture,
and moral behavior. The three were interrelated and inseparable.
“Since the very beginning, I had been categorizing
Judo into three parts,” Kano wrote, “a physical exercise,
a martial art, and the cultivation of wisdom and
virtue. I anticipated that practitioners would develop
their bodies in an ideal manner and also improve their
wisdom and virtue, and make the spirit of Judo live in
their daily lives.”
Chivalry Is Reborn
It’s important to note that Japan in the late nineteenth
century had no concept of sport. It was a society
quickly coming out of three hundred years of isolation
that didn’t understand the meanings of “team” or “fair
play.” Japan was on the other end of the spectrum from
the most powerful nation on the planet—Britain—which
imbued its adolescents with the spirit of competition and
exported its games around the world, including America
(rugby and cricket were the bases for football and baseball).
British youth grew up knowing the meaning of selfless sacrifice,
that the victory of the team is greater than the victory
of the individual. The British saw sport as a part of life that
brought people together peacefully.
Kano believed in the western concept of fair play, and saw the
need for organized sport in everyday life. As the headmaster of the
elite Gakushin School, he mandated that all students participate
in a sport (thus starting the tradition of gym class hazing). Until
that time, the ruling samurai culture believed that the one perfect
cut of a katana blade was all that was needed to end a contest, so
its fighting style was aptly called shobu, or “sudden death.” Kano
saw shobu as stifling creativity because it was risk-averse and detracted
from the student’s ability to formulate a strategy. If a game
had multiple opportunities to score, participants would have to
develop plans of attack and take risks to win, so he organized Judo
contests around point-scoring systems instead of shobu.
1860 – Jigoro Kano
was born.
1871 – Family moved
to Tokyo.
1874 – Sent to private
schools run by Europeans.
1877 – Enrolls at Tokyo
Imperial University.
Starts dabbling in Tenjin
Shinyo-ryu Jiu-Jitsu,
under Hachinosuke
Fukuda.
1879 – Demonstrated
Jiu-Jitsu for Ulysses S.
Grant when he visited
Japan. Fukuda died.
Kano began studying
with Iso Masatomo,
who stressed kata
(form), atemi (striking
vital areas), and randori
(free form).
1881 – Licensed to
teach Tenjin Shinyo-ryu.
Kano saw demo of
Yoshin-ryu by Hirosuke
Totsuka . Masatomo
died. Kato began
training in Kito-ryu
with Iikubo Tsunetoshi
and learned throwing
techniques.
1882 – Became
an instructor at
Gakushuin, an elite
school. Established
Kodokan in a temple;
opened the Kano Juka,
a prep school, and the
Koubunkan, an English
language school.
1883 – Kano established
a dojo at home.
1884 – Judo formally
established, with bylaws.
Red and White
tournament.Rice cake
cutting ceremony.
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JUDO
1884 was a big year for Judo. Kano had written the first bylaws
of his Kodokan (judo school), instituted the rice cake cutting ceremony
to start his hellish winter training session, and inaugurated
the first Red and White tournament that is now the longest
running competitive sporting event in the world. As Wayne Muromoto
wrote in his magazine, Furyu: The Budo Journal, these early
competitions had rules, but they were still trying to define themselves.
“You scored an ippon (a full point) with throws, chokes,
holds, or arm locks that would, in an actual situation, completely
overwhelm your opponent. You usually went until someone
dropped from sheer exhaustion or the judge ended it, awarding
the match to the clear victor.”
“Kosen students were the green berets of Judo.
They were seen as the cream of the grappling
crop, and their attitude of “I’ll let it snap before I
tap” earned them a great deal of respect”
These achievements, though remarkable, were still known only
among the practitioners of Kodokan Judo. It wasn’t until 1886
that Judo announced its presence with authority to the public by
soundly defeating the powerful Totsuka-ha Yoshin-ryu Jiu-Jitsu
school at a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Academy challenge (final
score 12-2 with two draws, but historical accounts differ ). Suddenly
people took note of the frail Kano and his ability to toss
aside a larger, stronger man effortlessly. The police challenge was
to Judo what the first Stephan Bonnar-Forrest Griffin fight was to
the UFC, and for the next fourteen years, Judo enjoyed a meteoric
rise in popularity.
But at the turn of the century, the art tasted its first bitter pill
of defeat. In 1900, the Kodokan lost a challenge match to the Fusen-ryu
Jiu-Jitsu school, which emphasized newaza, or grappling
techniques, over tachi-waza, or throwing techniques. Kano was
not about to sit around and let his art take a black eye. He sought
out the Fusen-ryu master, Mataemon Tanabe, to learn his repertoire
of grappling techniques, and immediately incorporated
them into the Kodokan’s teachings. This was a milestone because
it started a trend toward grappling Judo, with major ramifications
for the martial arts that can still be seen today.
They Call Me Janus
While Jigoro Kano was obsessive about evolving Judo, it
wasn’t his day job. Kano was first and foremost an educator. In
1901, after nineteen years as the Gakushin School headmaster,
he was appointed as director of the Tokyo Higher Normal School.
Kano made great strides in blending sport into everyday life for his
students, and in 1911 Judo officially became part of the Japanese
school system’s curriculum. His efforts to use sport to foster better
relations were recognized when he was appointed the first Asian
member of the International Olympic Committee. At that time,
the Olympics were not the spectacle of grandeur that they are today
(the 1908 games listed Tug-of-War as a sport), but his appointment
was still another major milestone in the history of Judo.
By 1912, Judo dominated the Japanese martial arts landscape,
and Jiu-Jitsu was in jeopardy of dying out altogether. Kano’s obsession
with learning kicked in and, in order to salvage what he
could from a seemingly doomed art, he pulled together the remaining
authorities on Jiu-Jitsu and adopted their most effective
techniques for the Kodokan. But this had an unforeseen side effect.
Along with a trend toward newaza, which began after the
Fusen-ryu victory, an influx of new ground techniques generated
a highly effective form of grappling Judo, especially at high
school tournaments. It was called Kosen Judo, and the style was
so dominant that, by 1925, Kano’s core tachi-waza throwing
techniques were in danger of becoming extinct.
For the first time in his professional life, Jigoro Kano displayed
a close-minded approach to learning. He changed the rules of
Judo tournaments so that athletes were required to start from a
standing throwing position, so they were forced to learn the core
principles of kuzushi. No matter how close throwing techniques
were to his heart, however, Kano recognized the need for the art
to evolve. Applying a clear double standard, he withdrew his rule
change for a few select schools known as the “Seven Universities.”
To this day, their tournaments are held under different rules from
those of the rest of the Japanese school system ; and it’s in those
tournaments that Kosen Judo still flourishes.
The Judo Virus
Kosen students were the green berets of Judo. They were
seen as the cream of the grappling crop, and their attitude of “I’ll
let it snap before I tap” earned them a great deal of respect in
the sport. It also spawned two Judo offshoots that would become
world renowned: Sambo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Mitsuyo Maeda, long credited with having taught the Gracie
family his fighting style, enrolled in the Kodokan in 1897 and was
trained as a judoka during the golden age of grappling Judo. He
proved himself in multiple tournaments, so in 1904 Kano sent
him on a world “Judo is great” tour that eventually ended in Brazil.
Known as the Conde Coma (“Count of Combat”), Maeda reportedly
won over 1,000 matches on four continents as he challenged
anyone and everyone to a fight. His mix of Judo, Jiu-Jitsu,
and striking, which he’d gleaned from so many fights, formed
the nearly perfect street-fighting technique that he taught in his
new school in Brazil during the 1920s. In 1925, Brazilian politician
Gastão Gracie took notice and hired Maeda to teach his sons
Carlos and Helio. If you don’t know the history of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu
thereafter, grab a copy of my book and read chapter two.
Shortly after World War II, one of the greatest milestones in
Judo history occurred in Brazil. Gracie Jiu-Jitsu enjoyed an explosion
in popularity, and the country was captivated with the family’s
resident bad ass, Helio Gracie, who had proven to be a master
1886 – Challenge at
theTokyo Metropolitan
Police Academy.
1888 - Kano gave a
lecture at the British
embassy in Tokyo:
“Gaining Victory by
Yielding to Strength.”
1890 – Second Kodokan
building.
1889 – Kano took first
trip to spread the word
on Judo.
1892 – Kano made first
trip to Shanghai.
1894 – Third Kodokan
building. First Kodokan
council. First special
winter training session
(kangeiko).
1896 – First special
summer training session
(shochugeiko).
1897 – Fourth Kodokan
building.
1898 – Fifth Kodokan
building. Kano was
appointed Director of
Primary Education at
the Ministry of Education.
1901 – Kano appointed
President of Tokyo
Higher Normal School.
1909 – Kano appointed
to IOC. His Kodokan
became a Japanese
foundation
1911 – Judo teachers
training association
established. Judo
introduced as part of
the school system.
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of fighting. In 1949, the Gracies challenged the best in Judo to a
fight in front of 20,000 Brazilians. The result was the epic battle
between Helio and Masahiko Kimura. In eighteen minutes Helio
was overwhelmed, and his elbow was broken when he refused
to tap under the duress of Kimura’s signature move. (If Kimura
had been Tito Ortiz, he would have immediately put on a “Your
Jiu-Jitsu is no good here” tee-shirt). It would be 34 years before
the Gracie family traveled abroad to stage another challenge,
but when they did, it would be big. They called it “The Ultimate
Fighting Championship.”
On the other side of the world, another Kosen Judo student
was taking his own show on the road, though it’s doubtful he
ran into any spicy Brazilian ladies along the way. Vasili Oshchepkov
was awarded his second dan (grades of Judo black belts; there
are five) from Jigoro Kano himself, and he took his art back to
Russia. There he mixed it with various ethnic styles of wrestling
(Georgian, Moldavian , Uzbek, and Armenian) and developed the
framework of what would eventually become the Soviet art of
Sambo. Along with Victor Spiridonov, Oshchepkov taught it to
the Red Army starting in 1923.
During the Cold War, Soviet Sambo had evolved enough to become
a new form that was distinct from traditional Judo. In typical
Soviet fashion, Sambo practitioners thought themselves to be
superior to Judo fighters. That all changed in 1972, when judokas
Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki and Nobuyuki Sato entered a national
Sambo competition in Riga, Latvia, and destroyed everyone. Suddenly,
Sambo clubs converted back into Judo clubs. Those wacky
Soviets had a habit of overestimating themselves.
Mitsuyo Maeda
(AKA Count Coma)
is the man credited
with teaching the
Gracies.
Modern Judo
Back in Japan, Judo had gained nationwide prominence
when the first all-Japan tournament was held in 1930. But just
when it seemed as if Judo would become the national pastime, Japan
entered one of its darkest periods. The 1930s saw the start of
a bloody phase of violent Japanese expansionism that didn’t end
until atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945. During this time, with most of the country’s fighting-age
men deployed around East Asia, Judo stagnated. It suffered an additional
blow in 1938, when Jigoro Kano died on a ship while en
route back to Japan from an IOC meeting in Cairo.
Under the U.S. occupation after World War II, Japan experienced
a period of nonaggression that reinvigorated the art and
even spread it back to North America. In 1951 the International
Judo Federation was formed and, just five years later, it held its first
World Championships in Tokyo. The IJF opted not to restrict the
competition to weight classes since the philosophy of Judo was
that a smaller man could easily throw a larger one. That theory
was literally tossed out the window at the third world championships,
in 1961, when Dutch judoka Anton Geesink won the world
title. The domination of Judo by a non-Japanese was a shocking
revelation, and it changed the sport. Reluctantly, the IJF instituted
weight classes, but this bad tiding produced good news. The
installment of weight classes meant that the competition was getting
better. Judokas around the world were becoming more and
more skilled at their art, so the division of competitors into classes
based on weight evened out the playing field to compensate for
their prowess. In 1964, Men’s Judo was introduced in the Olympic
Games, and it became a permanent sport in 1972. In 1988, the
open weight class was dropped from Judo Olympic competition,
and in 1992 Women’s Judo became an Olympic sport.
Judo’s influence on Mixed Martial Arts is evident. Several judokas
are successful in MMA, including Pride FC and UFC vet
Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, who won the US Open Judo championship
in 2001. One of the greatest fighters of all time, Fedor
Emelianenko, comes from a Sambo fighting background. And in
a moment of history repeating itself, Renzo Gracie refused to tap
when caught in a Kimura lock by Kazushi Sakuraba at Pride 10,
resulting in a badly broken elbow.
“Judo almost gives you an unfair advantage in a fight,” says
UFC welterweight Karo Parisyan. “If a guy comes at me like a
beast or tries to get my back, I just use his strength and aggression
against him and dump him on his head.”
Karo needs to wear a printed t-shirt after a win:
“Your Jiu-Jitsu is no good here.”
1920 – Kano left Tokyo
Higher Normal School.
1930 – First All-Japan
Judo tournament.
1938 – Kano died.
1949 – Helio Gracie vs.
Masahiko Kimura fight.
1951 – IJF formed.
1956 – World Judo
Championships in
Tokyo.
1958 – New Kodokan
built.
1961 – Anton Geesink
of Holland won the
world championship.
Weight classes
instituted.
1964 – Men’s Judo
introduced to Olympic
Games.
1972 – Judo became
permanent sport in the
Olympics. Japanese
judokas went to the
Soviet Union and kicked
their asses.
1988 – Open weight
class dropped from
Judo Olympic competition.
1992 – Women’s Judo
became an Olympic
sport.
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