<\/p>\n
Japanese martial arts in the Middle Ages were centred on the bow, those of early modern times on the sword, but after the Meiji Restoration the leading art was judo. A key person in that evolution was Kan\u014d Jigor\u014d. He took the j\u016bjutsu<\/em> of early modern times and rearranged it in a way to suit modern Japan. Kan\u014d established the K\u014dd\u014dkan, and built a foundation for its long prosperity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kan\u014d was born in 1860. He was a small child and was physically very weak. Because he had an inferiority complex to other children, he took an interest in j\u016bjutsu<\/em> when he heard that it would allow a man with a small body to throw or subdue a bigger opponent. J\u016bjutsu<\/em>’s characteristics are summarised in the sentence “the soft controls the strong”: i.e., a big, physically strong man can be dealt with and thrown by a smaller person. Kan\u014d was greatly attracted to this aspect and is the main reason why he started j\u016bjutsu<\/em>. At first, he studied the ry\u016bha<\/em> called Tenjin Shiny\u014d-ry\u016b, and later on the Kit\u014d-ry\u016b. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n During his j\u016bjutsu<\/em> training, he made three important discoveries. First, that training in j\u016bjutsu<\/em> increases physical strength; second, that it had an effect on the mind as well; and finally, that the laws of victory and defeat could be applied in daily life. With these discoveries, Kan\u014d believed that if he could reorganise the corpus of techniques into something that suited the modern era, then it could be a valuable means for educating youth. He founded the K\u014dd\u014dkan J\u016bd\u014d (its formal name was Nihon-den K\u014dd\u014dkan J\u016bd\u014d) with the idea of teaching the virtues of this traditional physical culture and its underpinning philosophy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kan\u014d started j\u016bjutsu<\/em> because of his weak body, and he found a real strength after he started training. However, he did not emphasise power or strength; on the contrary he was acutely aware of the educational value of j\u016bjutsu<\/em> and continued his activities as an educator. He became instructor in various prestigious schools such the Gakushuin School, the Fifth Senior High School in Kumamoto, and finally the principal of the Tokyo Higher Normal School. With his deeper understanding of the depth of this martial art, he made a distinction between the words –jutsu<\/em> (“technique”) and –d\u014d<\/em> (“way”), and created “j<\/em>\u016b<\/em>-d<\/em>\u014d<\/em>”. The word d\u014d<\/em> emphasises educational aspects encompassing physical education (proper growth of muscles, physical health, freedom of limb movement); competition (dealing with victory and defeat in actual combat); and training of the mind (ethics in life, morals). The distinctiveness of Kan\u014d’s way of thinking was that he wanted to make judo tool for character education.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Furthermore, Kan\u014d announced in 1922 his two mottoes of “seiryoku-zen’<\/em>y\u014d<\/em>” (maximum efficient use of strength), and “j<\/em>ita-ky\u014dei<\/em>” (mutual benefit and prosperity). Before Kan\u014d, jujutsu <\/em>wasvery technical as indicated by the adage “soft controls the strong”; but his maxims were designed to benefit society. Kan\u014d became the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee, and he maintained a profound friendship with Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games. Because of his connections, Kan\u014d’s ideals were deeply influenced by Western ideologies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Meiji period was a time in which Japan sought to copy many aspects of Western society and technology to the detriment of traditional culture such as the martial arts. He took aspects of traditional culture and remodeled them to suit the educational needs of people in the modern era. This was Kan\u014d’s greatest achievement. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Japanese martial arts in the Middle Ages were centred on the bow, those of early modern times on the sword, bu… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1104,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}