A bullied 41-kilogram schoolboy grew up to invent judo and its belts
As a teenager Kanō Jigorō stood 1.57 metres and weighed 41 kilograms, and classmates would drag him outside to beat him. He wanted to be able to fight back. That wish led him to jujutsu, then to founding judo, the black belt, and the dan grades now used across martial arts.
Kanō came from a sake-brewing family in Mikage, now part of Kobe, born on 10 December 1860. His father, adopted into the family, skipped the brewery to work as a lay priest and shipping clerk, and believed passionately in education. Jigorō, his third son, studied under neo-Confucian scholars, lost his mother at nine, and moved with the family to Tokyo, where he had an English tutor. At Ikuei Academy, run by Europeans, he polished his English and German; he became fluent enough to keep his diary in elegant English.
The bullying was fierce. A family friend from the shōgun's guard, Nakai Baisei, showed him jujutsu techniques that let a smaller fighter beat a bigger one, while warning that the art was outdated and risky. His father also objected but relented, provided the boy committed to mastering it. At Tokyo Imperial University, which he entered in 1877 and left in 1882 with a degree in political science and philosophy, Kanō hunted for teachers among bonesetters, reasoning that doctors who knew the art would teach it best. That search led him to Fukuda Hachinosuke, who taught the Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū style in a ten-mat room beside his clinic.
From that grounding Kanō built judo, guided by mottoes such as maximum efficiency with minimal effort and mutual welfare and benefit. It became one of the first Japanese martial arts known worldwide and joined the Olympics in 1964 for men and 1992 for women. He also promoted swimming, athletics and weightlifting, is credited by some with starting modern strength training in Japan, helped Gichin Funakoshi establish karate, and put judo and kendo into public schools.
Education remained his career. He ran primary education at the Ministry of Education from 1898 to 1901 and headed Tokyo Higher Normal School for two decades. From 1909 he was the first Asian on the International Olympic Committee, championing Tokyo's bid for 1940. He died on 4 May 1938, and in 1999 became the first inductee of the International Judo Federation Hall of Fame.
Source: Kanō Jigorō
