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Judo's Founder: Jigoro Kano's Journey

Kano Jigoro was born in 1860 in Japan and founded judo. He came from a wealthy family and had an academic upbringing. As a teenager, he sought to learn jujutsu to defend against bullying at his school. However, many jujutsu teachers had given up teaching due to westernization in Japan at the time. After several unsuccessful attempts, Kano eventually found a teacher willing to teach him jujutsu.

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Jitendra Pandey
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88 views1 page

Judo's Founder: Jigoro Kano's Journey

Kano Jigoro was born in 1860 in Japan and founded judo. He came from a wealthy family and had an academic upbringing. As a teenager, he sought to learn jujutsu to defend against bullying at his school. However, many jujutsu teachers had given up teaching due to westernization in Japan at the time. After several unsuccessful attempts, Kano eventually found a teacher willing to teach him jujutsu.

Uploaded by

Jitendra Pandey
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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History and philosophy[edit]

Early life of the founder[edit]

Jigoro Kano

The early history of judo is inseparable from its founder, Japanese polymath and educator Kanō


Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎, Jigoro Kano, 1860–1938), born Shinnosuke Jigorō (新之助 治五郎, Jigorō
Shinnosuke). Kano was born into a relatively affluent family. His father, Jirosaku, was the second
son of the head priest of the Shinto Hiyoshi shrine in Shiga Prefecture. He married Sadako Kano,
daughter of the owner of Kiku-Masamune sake brewing company and was adopted by the family,
changing his name to Kano. He ultimately became an official in the Shogunal government.[3]
Jigoro Kano had an academic upbringing and, from the age of seven, he studied
English, shodō (書道, Japanese calligraphy) and the Four Confucian Texts (四書, Shisho) under
a number of tutors.[4] When he was fourteen, Kano began boarding at an English-medium school,
Ikuei-Gijuku in Shiba, Tokyo. The culture of bullying endemic at this school was the catalyst that
caused Kano to seek out a Jūjutsu (柔術, Jujutsu) dōjō (道場, dōjō, training place) at which to
train.[4]
Early attempts to find a jujutsu teacher who was willing to take him on met with little success.
With the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, jujutsu had become
unfashionable in an increasingly westernized Japan. Many of those who had once taught the art
had been forced out of teaching or become so disillusioned with it that they had simply given up.
Nakai Umenari, an acquaintance of Kanō's father and a former soldier, agreed to show him kata,
but not to teach him. The caretaker of Jirosaku's second house, Katagiri Ryuji, also knew jujutsu,
but would not teach it as he believed it was no longer of practical use. Another frequent visitor,
Imai Genshiro of Kyūshin-ryū (扱心流) school of jujutsu, also refused.[5] Several years passed
before he finally found a willing teacher.[5]

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