Judo 4 Juniors

Judo, which means "gentle way" is a martial art that was born in Japan, and it is now known around the world as an Olympic sport since 1964. Judo was established in 1882 by combining jujitsu, a form of wrestling, with mental discipline. It is the most widely-practiced martial art in the world, and the second-most practiced sport worldwide behind football SCORING Ippon is the best in that it results in immediate victory and can be achieved by throwing an opponent in such a way as to make then land on their back. Alternative methods of scoring ippon include trapping an opponent in an armhold or stranglehold to the extent that it forces them to submit or immobilising an opponent on the floor for at least 20 seconds.The next best score is a Waza-ari, which is a half point in that the award of two waza-ari in a bout is the same as ippon, and hence the winner is declared. Waza-ari is awarded for lesser throws than those scoring ippon, and for immobilising the opponent for less than the time required to score Ippon. Jigoro Kano From the twelfth to the nineteenth century Japan was ruled by the samurai, a class of professional soldiers. This provided fertile ground for various martial arts to develop. In addition to fighting with swords and bows and arrows, the samurai developed jujitsu to fight enemies at close quarters on the battlefield. Several different styles of jujitsu evolved, and hand-to-hand combat spread as an important form of military training. The era of samurai rule came to an end with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and Western culture began filtering in into Japanese society. Jujitsu fell into decline, but the enthusiasm of one young man rescued it from extinction. That man was Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo as we know it today. Kano excelled in schoolwork but had an inferiority complex about his small physique. So he became an apprentice of Yanosuke Fukuda, a master of the Tenjin Shin’yo school of jujitsu, when he was 17 and worked to become stronger. In May 1882, when he was just 21 years old, he took the best things about each jujitsu style and created a single new school. This was the birth of modern Judo.