Name: Jigoro Kano & the Founding of Judo: Timeline Reference
Brand: Mat Manual

The companion to Jigoro Kano and the Founding of Kodokan Judo. The founding story on one reference sheet: the dates, the two schools Kano learned from, and the ideas he built into an art now practiced worldwide.

Timeline

Year	Event
1860	Jigoro Kano is born in Mikage, near present-day Kobe, Japan.
1877	Kano begins jujutsu training in Tenjin Shinyo-ryu under Fukuda Hachinosuke, in Tokyo.
1879	Fukuda dies. Kano continues in Tenjin Shinyo-ryu under Iso Masatomo.
c. 1881	Kano studies Kito-ryu under Iikubo Tsunetoshi, whose throwing methods and philosophy of yielding shape him deeply.
1882	Kano founds the Kodokan at Eishoji temple in Tokyo, a dojo of twelve tatami mats, and names his art judo, "the gentle way." Nine students sign the enrollment book.
1883	Kano awards judo's first dan grades: Tomita Tsunejiro and Saigo Shiro receive shodan in August, the first black belt ranks in martial arts history.
1886	The Kodokan defeats the Totsuka school in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police tournament and wins the right to teach the police. (The traditional account: the victory and its consequences are documented. The exact bout-by-bout record comes through Kodokan tradition rather than a surviving scoresheet.)
1887	The Kodokan leaves the temple for a 40-mat dojo at Fujimicho. The school has outgrown twelve mats for good.
1889	Kano tours Europe to study education systems, the first of the foreign trips that run through his whole career.
1893	Kano becomes principal of Tokyo Higher Normal School, Japan's teacher-training flagship. He holds the post, across three spells, until 1920.
1895	Kano organizes the Gokyo, forty core throws arranged in five teaching groups.
1899	A Dai Nippon Butokukai committee chaired by Kano drafts the first formal contest rules for jujutsu competition. The Kodokan adopts its own amended version in 1900. Competition now has a written frame.
1904	Yamashita teaches in Washington and gives lessons to President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. He begins teaching at the US Naval Academy the following January.
1907	The training uniform Kano has been standardizing takes its modern form. At this point the only belt colors in the system are white and black.
1909	Kano becomes the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee.
1912	Japan enters the Olympic Games for the first time, at Stockholm, in an effort Kano organized through the national sports association he helped found in 1911.
1914	Maeda Mitsuyo, a Kodokan instructor who had been touring the Americas since 1904, arrives in Brazil, landing at Porto Alegre on 14 November. His years of teaching there become a root of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
1918	Gunji Koizumi opens the Budokwai in London on 26 January, today recognized as the oldest judo club in Europe.
1920	The Gokyo is revised into the forty-throw form still taught today.
1922	Kano is appointed to the House of Peers, Japan's upper house of parliament.
1925	Kodokan contest rules restrict joint locks to the elbow only, the boundary IJF competition still uses. Dragging an opponent down to enter groundwork is prohibited in the same revision.
1926	The Kodokan formally opens a women's section, the joshi-bu. Women have trained privately since the 1890s and informally since 1923.
1936	Kano, in Berlin as an IOC member, helps Tokyo win the 1940 Olympic Games. War cancels those Games, and Kano never sees his art in the Olympics.
1937	Isogai Hajime and Nagaoka Shuichi receive 10th dan in December, the first living judoka to hold the grade. Yamashita, the first 10th dan of all, received his after his death in 1935.
1938	Kano dies on May 4, aboard the ship Hikawa Maru, returning from the IOC meeting in Cairo. The reported cause was pneumonia.
1945	Kyuzo Mifune, widely regarded as the finest technician the Kodokan produced, is promoted to 10th dan.
1946	The occupation authorities dissolve the Dai Nippon Butokukai in November. Budo has been banned in school curricula since late 1945, but the Kodokan, a private institution, never closes.
1950	The ban on teaching judo in schools is lifted in October. Judo's postwar growth begins.
1951	The International Judo Federation (IJF) is founded, giving the art a single world governing body.
1956	The first World Championships are held in Tokyo. Shokichi Natsui becomes the first world champion, in a single open-weight division.
1958	The Kodokan moves to Kasuga in Tokyo, a complex of 986 mats that remains its home today.
1961	Anton Geesink of the Netherlands wins the world title in Paris, the first non-Japanese world champion.
1964	Men's judo debuts at the Tokyo Olympics, in Kano's home city, twenty-six years after his death. Anton Geesink of the Netherlands wins the open category in Tokyo, and judo's globalization stops being a prediction and becomes a result.
1972	Left off the program in 1968, judo returns at the Munich Olympics and has been an Olympic sport ever since.
1980	The first Women's World Championships are held in New York.
1988 / 1992	Women's judo appears as an Olympic demonstration event, then becomes a full medal sport.
2010	The IJF bans direct attacks to the legs with the hands in competition, the largest technique change of the modern rules era. The throws themselves stay in the Kodokan catalog and in kata. The ban is tightened in 2013, and the penalty is later softened to shido.
2021	A mixed team event joins the Olympic program at the delayed Tokyo Games, judo's first Olympic team medals.
Today	Judo is practiced on every continent under the IJF and national federations. The Kodokan in Tokyo remains the art's headquarters and the keeper of its syllabus.

Art	Kodokan Judo
Family	Kodokan Judo
Level	all-levels
Format	history
Topics	history