Jigoro Kano

Jigorō Kanō (嘉納 治五郎, Kanō Jigorō^?) (Kōbe, Kansai region, October 28, 1860, -Aboard the Hikawa Maru- May 4, 1938) was a master of arts martial, teacher, translator and Japanese economist, known for being the creator of judo.

In 1882, Kanō founded the Kōdōkan, or "School for the Study of the Way". His martial arts system known as judo, based on the ancient schools of Jiu-jitsu (mainly the Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū and Kitō-ryū schools), prevailed over other hand-to-hand fighting systems of the time or Jujutsu in Japan. Kanō successfully incorporated judo into the Japanese educational system, the military, and even the Japanese police since the beginning of the 20th century, including defending against punches and against modern techniques such as defending against various types of assault with handguns. fire collected in their forms or kata.

As a sport, judo developed around throws, sweeps, some takedowns, chokes, arm locks, and ground fighting.

Master Kanō was elected representative of the Government of Japan to the International Olympic Committee. Despite not being convinced at first that judo should be an Olympic sport, since only randori, a small aspect of judo, could then be considered as a competitive aspect (see letter to master Gunji Koizumi, partially translated below), this fact came true in 1964, at the games held in Tokyo. However, Kanō had died several years ago, on May 4, 1938, aboard the Hikawa Maru when he was on a return trip to Japan.

Kanō was posthumously awarded the highest judo rank, or 10th Dan, which wears the white belt. According to the philosophy of judo, this is a path of continuous learning and when you die it is as if you were starting over (hence the highest graduation per belt, the white one, coincides with the first).

Currently, judo is one of the four most practiced combat disciplines on the planet, with around twelve million practitioners.

Biography

Jigorō Kanō was born on October 28, 1860 in Mikage, Hyogo District, Japan. He was the son of Sadako and her husband Jirōsaku Kanō (born Jirōsaku Mareshiba), who had been adopted by a family of sake producers, but was not included in the family business. His father placed great importance on his children's education, which included foreign languages such as English and German. After the death of his mother Sadako when he was 9 years old, the family moved to Tokyo. In 1891 he married Sumako Takezoe, with whom he had six daughters and three sons.

The Professor

Despite his later dedication to judo, Jigorō Kanō initially devoted himself to teaching in schools and regularly practicing Jiu-jitsu (in the Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū and Kitō-ryū styles)., In private. He subsequently entered Tokyo Imperial University in June 1881, where he majored in political science and economics, which at that time were taught by the Department of Aesthetics and Morals. He graduated in July 1882, and the following month he began working as a teacher at the Gakushūin, or Peer School, in Tokyo. As early as 1883, Kanō was appointed professor of economics at the Komaba Agricultural University (now the University of Tokyo Faculty of Agronomy), but in April 1885 he returned to the Gakushūin.

In January 1891, Kanō was appointed to a position in the Ministry of Education. However, in August 1891 he left it to become dean of the Fifth Higher Normal School (now Kumamoto University). Around the same time, he married Sumako Takezoe, the daughter of a former Japanese ambassador to Korea. The couple had six daughters and three sons.

During the summer of 1892, Kanō went to the Chinese city of Shanghai to help establish an exchange program that would allow Chinese students to study in Japan. Kanō would visit Shanghai again in 1905, 1915, and 1921.

In January 1898 he was appointed director of primary education in the Ministry of Education, and in August 1899 he received a scholarship that allowed him to study in Europe, where he improved his previous knowledge of foreign languages, becoming an interpreter and translator. His ship left Yokohama on September 13, 1899, and arrived in Marseilles (France) on October 15 of that year. He spent almost a year in Europe, and during this trip he visited Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, and London. He returned to Japan in 1901 and shortly thereafter resumed his position as president of the Tokyo Higher Normal School, remaining in this position until his retirement on January 16, 1920.

Since he majored in political science and economics, Kanō's family thought that after graduating from university he would continue his career in a government ministry. In fact, through influential friends of his father's, he was initially offered a position in the Ministry of Finance. However, his love of teaching led him to accept a position teaching Gakushūin instead. Japan's elite students attended Gakushūin and were of higher social standing than their teachers. For example, students were allowed to travel in cars pulled by people (jinrikisha), while teachers were prohibited from doing so. Teachers were often forced to visit the homes of their students to give instructions or advice. Somehow, the professors were still treated as servants of the nobility.

Kanō believed this was unacceptable and refused to take a subservient role in teaching his students. For him, a teacher should command respect. At the same time, he used the latest European and American pedagogical methods in his classes, especially influenced by the theories of the American educator John Dewey. Kanō's methods did not have the desired effect on his students, although his ideas found acceptance in the administration with the arrival of a new principal.

Kanō's educational philosophy was a combination of traditional Japanese methods of neo-Confucianism and contemporary European and American philosophies, including instrumentalism, utilitarianism, and "developmental progressivism," as it was called. then called social Darwinism.

The goals of Kanō's educational philosophy and methods (which were in fact those of most early-century Japanese educational programs XX) were: the development of mind, body and spirit in equal proportion; increased patriotism and loyalty, especially to the emperor; the teaching of public morality and the increase of physical strength and stamina above all, for the purpose of making young men more fit for military service.

Calisthenics was the system of physical exercise practiced at the time, but it could be boring, especially in the huge formations in which it was practiced; On the other hand, at the secondary and university educational levels, sports such as baseball and rugby were not a practical source of physical exercise for the masses, but rather a pastime practiced in the few locations that were available for their practice, and sought to be accepted by the public. mentality of that time. Furthermore, at the elite sport level none of these sports, including judo itself, placed too much emphasis on the moral or intellectual development of its practitioners. Instead, elite coaches and athletes tended to emphasize victory at any cost.

For Kanō, the way to include the desired physical exercise in the framework of his educational philosophy was summed up in one word: Judo. Judo should not be focused solely on the sense of throwing or knocking down another person, nor on winning at any cost; His approach was in the sense of & # 34; achieve maximum effectiveness with minimum effort & # 34; and "mutual welfare and benefit," or as Kanō himself told a journalist in 1938: "When giving in is the most efficient use of energy, then giving in is judo".

In the International Olympic Committee

Kanō, thanks to his family and diplomatic connections, became involved in the activities of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1909. This occurred after Kristian Hellström of the Swedish Olympic Committee wrote to the governments of Japan and China to to ask if they were going to send representative teams to the 1912 Olympic Games. The Japanese government did not want to refuse to participate in such an international arena, so this project was entrusted to the Ministry of Education, which turned to Kanō, then a physical education and languages teacher, with recent experience in Europe. Kanō agreed to represent Japan on the International Olympic Committee, and, after speaking with the French ambassador to Japan and reviewing the documentation sent by the Swedes, got, in his words, "a pretty good idea of what they were." the Olympic Games".

To fulfill his duties as the representative of the Asian continent in 1912, Kanō helped establish the Japan Amateur Athletic Association (Dai Nippon Tai-iku Kyokai), which was tasked with overseeing the sport amateur. Kanō was Japan's official representative for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, and was involved in organizing the Far Eastern edition of the Games that was held in Osaka in May 1917. In 1920 Kanō represented Japan at the Games. Olympic Games in Antwerp, and during the 1920s he worked for the Japan Council of Physical Education. He did not take a major part in organizing the 1923 Far Eastern Games (also held in Osaka), nor did he attend the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, but he did represent Japan at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam (1928), Los Angeles (1932) and Berlin (1936). From 1931 to 1938, he was also one of the leading international spokesmen for Japan's bid for the 1940 Olympic Games.

Kanō's main goal was, according to his words, to bring people together for a common cause, with a feeling of friendship. His goals initially did not include introducing judo as an Olympic sport. As he himself said in a letter to the British master Gunji Koizumi in 1936:

I have been asked by people from various sectors regarding the wisdom and possibility of the judo to be introduced at the Olympic Games. My point of view on the matter is now more passive. If it is the wish of the other member countries, I have no objection. But I'm not inclined to take the lead. On the one hand, the judo, in fact, is not a mere sport or game. I consider it a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural realization. Only one of the forms of judo training, the so-called randori, can be classified as a form of sport... [Moreover] the Olympic Games are so strongly influenced by nationalism that it is possible that the Judo will be influenced by it until it returns the judo competition to a "barbara" form of struggle as the Jiu-jitsu was before the Kodokan was founded. The Judo should be and remain as free as the art and science of external influences - political, national, racial, economic or any other organized interest. And everything related to him should be addressed to his ultimate goal, the benefit of humanity.

Kanō died on May 4, 1938, at the age of 77, aboard the ocean liner Hikawa Maru, while traveling to Japan.

In 1962, years after the death of master Kanō, the IOC decided to accept judo as part of the official program of the Olympic Games, making its official appearance in the men's category at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

Death

On May 4, 1938 (two days before his arrival in Yokohama), on the way back from the IOC General Assembly in Cairo (Egypt), he died of pneumonia aboard the Hikawa Maru. His body was packed in ice and returned. At Yokohama port, the coffin was hung with the Olympic flag and unloaded from the ship. He died at the age of 77. He received the Asahi Sun Grand Cordon for his achievements during his lifetime. His grave is located at the Tokyo Metropolitan Yahabara Cemetery in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture.