Judo’s founder Jigoro Kano was decades ahead of his time by empowering women to take up the sport that prizes technique over brute force.
However, Japan’s female judoka have long grappled for equality, enduring discrimination and a headline-grabbing abuse scandal even while they were winning recognition with their brilliance on the mat.
Kano told his early disciples that the more subtle form of the martial art as practiced by women at the time “would be the real legacy” of judo — more so than power-based judo by men.
Photo: AFP
Indeed, a key principle of judo is ju yoku go wo seisu (roughly translated as “softness subdues hardness”), meaning that physically weaker judoka can use an opponent’s power against them.
Kaori Yamaguchi, who won judo bronze at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and now sits on the Japanese Olympics Committee, said that the revered Kano had a “very advanced spirit” for his time.
As the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee, Kano’s inclusion of women — and foreigners — was central to his philosophy that “judo must be open” and a contributor to world peace.
The crunch for women’s judo in Japan came in London when, to the shame of a nation used to a gold rush in the sport, Kaori Matsumoto was the only judoka to return with a gold medal.
Matsumoto, known as “the beast” for her outward expressions of competitive spirit, “saved the face of the judo community,” Yamaguchi said.
However, it later emerged that the coach of the women’s team in the run-up to the 2012 Games had been using a bamboo sword to beat athletes, calling them “ugly” and telling them to “die.”
The abuse scandal sparked a wholesale overhaul in training methods for women’s judo.
Haruka Tachimoto, who won gold in Rio de Janeiro, said that she had been like a “moving robot” until the change in regime.
“I was just doing what I was told to do,” she said.
After placing seventh in London, she realized that she had to force through reform herself.
“I wanted to change... I watched and listened to various things and people, and studied not only my competitors but also myself,” she added.
Yamaguchi, who spoke to women on the Japan team who suffered abuse at the time, said that “men could have endured the same thing without complaining,” because the traditional norm of not talking back to your instructors was so strong among men.
It was “women’s spirit of bucking mainstream values” that changed the system, she said.
Despite better equality for female judoka, there remains a glass ceiling when it comes to coaching, she said.
“It was regrettable that we couldn’t have a female head coach for the women’s national team for 2020 Tokyo even though many women are qualified,” Yamaguchi said.
“I hope we’ll have a female head coach for the 2024 Paris Games,” Yamaguchi said.
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