The Light of Kodokan Judo

The Light of Kodokan Judo

Thanks for posting.  Its an excellent read. I especially like the article of Winning at all Costs. The Aristotelian overtone speaks poetry to my brain. Dr David Matsumoto makes some excellent point that we need not look at judo through through the myopic lens of only winning, but to the larger social needs of those judoka who put on a judo gi. And although Dr Matsumoto was speaking of only Japanese judo I personally think it apply to all judo. Really ---Thank you for posting.

Clearly the message is to the wider judo world ... or should be.

A prominent poster on this forum made at least one wise comment to me recently.  He was trying to help me put some "realism" into my goshinjutsu practice from his experience in related and relevant martial arts.  Of course in the first move there is a grip break ... as he pointed out there are actually two different ones used in combination ... the same two in the ryote dori in the junokata BTW ... but these are often smoothed over, assumed, or ignored entirely in the demonstration of both.  If uke were to really hold on and try to pop tori in the nards it might look like the Russian video just posted a day ago.  For example the grip break with my right hand ... I was doing just as I had been taught ... with sub-optimum efficiency and relying on my bulk ... i.e. "wrong."  Anyway, as part of showing me how to turn it into actual practice, he made a very wise remark ... something along the lines of "if we teach this ... just this ... to every schoolchild we will have gone a long way to accomplishing the goal of Jigoro Kano."

Do you get what he was trying to say?  And how that relates to Matsumoto's article?

If you were to go to YouTube and search for "wrist grab escape" ... well, I didn't see any judo people posting in the first three pages of videos.

"The vision of USJF is to have JUDO in every american community and school."  That's our vision statement.  In Hawaii that might work ... any place else it's a long row to hoe.  We seem to focus our efforts ... such as they are ... on promoting yet another after school sport ... competing with everything else that's out there ... most of those sports so familiar and so popular that there is really zero hope of displacing them.

The name "judo" still carries the weight and could be used to promote a well organized program of "stranger danger" avoidance and escape ... appropriate to the age and level of the child.  Question is ... are the vast majority of yudansha trained themselves?  And sadly the answer is "no."  Because we are focused on jacket wrestling.  But if judo were to be whole again ... if it included the aforementioned wrist grab escapes ... then the after school sport might someday follow ... with all the truly notable benefits that part of judo provides.  

And if all we accomplished was a few escapes (edit: and let's throw in ukemi) we would have still succeeded in realizing our vision.

Great post BillC. That USJF vision made for really depressing reading.

BillC wrote:Clearly the message is to the wider judo world ... or should be.

A prominent poster on this forum made at least one wise comment to me recently.  He was trying to help me put some "realism" into my goshinjutsu practice from his experience in related and relevant martial arts.  Of course in the first move there is a grip break ... as he pointed out there are actually two different ones used in combination ... the same two in the ryote dori in the junokata BTW ... but these are often smoothed over, assumed, or ignored entirely in the demonstration of both.  If uke were to really hold on and try to pop tori in the nards it might look like the Russian video just posted a day ago.  For example the grip break with my right hand ... I was doing just as I had been taught ... with sub-optimum efficiency and relying on my bulk ... i.e. "wrong."  Anyway, as part of showing me how to turn it into actual practice, he made a very wise remark ... something along the lines of "if we teach this ... just this ... to every schoolchild we will have gone a long way to accomplishing the goal of Jigoro Kano."

Do you get what he was trying to say?  And how that relates to Matsumoto's article?

If you were to go to YouTube and search for "wrist grab escape" ... well, I didn't see any judo people posting in the first three pages of videos.

And if all we accomplished was a few escapes (edit:  and let's throw in ukemi)  we would have still succeeded in realizing our vision.

Your definitely singing to the choir.

It is good thing you shared here with us.