Yamashita Yoshitsugu

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Yoshiaki Yamashita

Yoshiaki Yamashita (Japanese: 山下義韶, 16 February 1865-26 October 1935, also known as Yoshitsugu Yamashita), was the first person to have been awarded 10-dan grading in Kodokan judo. He was also a pioneer of judo in the United States.

Early Years

Yamashita was born in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture. His father was of the samurai class.[1] As a boy, Yamashita trained in Yoshin-ryū and Tenshin shinyo ryū jujutsu.[2] In August 1884, he joined the Kodokan judo dojo of Jigoro Kano, as its nineteenth member. He advanced to 1-dan ranking in three months, 4-dan ranking in two years, and 6-dan in fourteen years.[1] He was a member of the Kodokan team that competed with Tokyo Metropolitan Police jujutsu teams during the mid-1880s,[3][4] and during the 1890s, his jobs included teaching judo at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and Tokyo Imperial University (modern University of Tokyo).[1]

Introducing Judo to America

File:Lt Cdr Takeshita Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-08837 DLC (digital file from original print).jpg
Commander Isamu Takeshita at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1905.
President Theodore Roosevelt, 1904

The way that Yamashita came to America is this. In February 1902, a Seattle-based railroad executive named Samuel Hill decided that his 9-year-old son, James Nathan, should learn judo, which he had apparently seen or heard about while on a business trip to Japan. In Hill's words, the idea was for the boy to learn "the ideals of the Samurai class, for that class of men is a noble, high-minded class. They look beyond the modern commercial spirit."[5] Hill spoke to a Japanese American business associate, Masajiro Furuya,[6] for advice. Furuya referred Hill to Kazuyoshi Shibata, who was a student at Yale University. Shibata told Hill about Yamashita, and on July 21, 1903, Hill wrote a letter to Yamashita, asking him to come to Seattle at Hill's expense.[7] On August 26, 1903, Yamashita replied, writing that he, his wife, and one of his students (Saburo Kawaguchi) would leave for Seattle on September 22, 1903.[8]

The ship carrying the Yamashita party docked in Seattle on October 8, 1903.[9] A week later, on October 17, 1903, Yamashita and Kawaguchi gave a judo exhibition at a Seattle theater that Hill had hired for the evening. Attendance was by invitation only, and guests included Sam Hill's mother-in-law Mary Hill (wife of railroader J.J. Hill), Senator Russell Alger, and assorted sportswriters.[10] Afterwards, Hill took the Yamashita party east to Washington, D.C., where Mrs. Hill and young James Nathan were then living. Meanwhile, the favorable publicity surrounding the event caused Japanese Americans living in Seattle to start their own judo club, known as the Seattle Dojo.

Soon after arriving in the District of Columbia, Yamashita visited the Japanese Legation, and in March 1904, the Japanese naval attaché, Commander Isamu Takeshita, took Yamashita to the White House to meet President Theodore Roosevelt.[11] Roosevelt practiced wrestling and boxing while in the White House, and he had received jujutsu jackets from William Sturgis Bigelow[12] and jujutsu lessons from J. J. O'Brien, a Philadelphia police officer who had studied jujutsu while living in Nagasaki.[13][14][15] Roosevelt was impressed with Yamashita's judo, and during March and April 1904, Yamashita gave judo lessons to the President and interested family and staff in a room at the White House.[16][17] Subsequently, at other locations, Yamashita and his wife Fude gave lessons to the wives of other prominent Americans, to include Martha Blow Wadsworth, Hallie Elkins (wife of Senator Stephen Benton Elkins) and Elkins' sister Grace Davis Lee, and these women's children.[18]

In January 1905, Yamashita got a job teaching judo at the U.S. Naval Academy. There were about 25 students in his class, to include a future admiral, Robert L. Ghormley.[19] The position ended at the end of the school term, and Yamashita was not rehired for the following year.[20] When President Roosevelt heard of this, he spoke to the Secretary of the Navy, who in turn told the Superintendent of the Naval Academy to rehire Yamashita.[21] Consequently, Yamashita's judo was taught at the Naval Academy throughout the first six months of 1906.[22]

Later Life

At the end of the 1906 academic year, Yamashita left the United States for Japan.[23] On July 24, 1906, he participated in a conference in Kyoto that had been called for the purpose of standardizing judo kata that could be taught in the Japanese public schools. Subsequently, he was employed as a judo teacher at Tokyo Higher Normal School (Tokyo Koto Shihan Gakko).[17] An example of Yamashita's teaching method is the advice:[24]

Always try to think of improvement, and don't think that you are too good. The latter is very easy to do while learning judo.

From the 1910s until the mid-1930s, Yamashita often attended judo tournaments and exhibitions.[25] His last major public appearance was probably the All-Japan Judo Championships of 1934. British judoka Sarah Mayer described his participation as follows:[26]

One of the Imperial Princes was present and the Emperor sent a present of money. A speech was read from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education delivered a long oration. All the famous Judo men were there and there was a rather touching scene when Mr. Yamashita, the oldest pupil, came forward. He has lost his voice with advancing years and another man had to read his speech for him, but as he stood facing Prof. Kano I could not help thinking of the long years that these two men, now so old, had struggled to make Judo popular, and what a wonderful day it must be to them to have lived to see such an amazing achievement. Famous men demonstrated beautiful Kata when the speeches were over and Prof. Kano had dedicated three trees to his three teachers, and comic relief was provided by a match between me and Mr. [Kaichiro] Samura, who was good enough to get the worst of it.

The promotion to 10-dan was posthumous.

References

  1. ^ a b c Tomita, Tsuneo. "Histoire du Judo," Revue Judo Kodokan, November 1962, v. 12:5. Cite error: The named reference "tomita" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ Sol, Kim. "Part 8: Kodokan Becomes an Organization."[1]
  3. ^ Abel, Laszlo. "The Meiji Period Police Bujutsu Competitions: Judo versus Jujutsu," JMAS Newsletter, December 1984, v. 2:3, pp. 10-14.
  4. ^ Muromoto, Wayne. "Judo's Decisive Battle: Great Tournament between Kodokan Judo's Four Heavenly Lords and the Jujutsu Masters." Furyu, v. 3.[2]
  5. ^ Tuhy, John E. Sam Hill: The Prince of Castle Nowhere. Beaverton, Oregon: Timber Press, 1983, p. 71.
  6. ^ Gary Iwamoto, "Rise & Fall of an Empire", International Examiner, September 6, 2005.
  7. ^ Letter from Sam Hill to Y. Yamashita dated 21st Jul 1903, in Maryhill Museum of Art collection.
  8. ^ Letter from Y. Yamashita to Sam Hill dated 26th August, 1903, in Maryhill Museum of Art collection.
  9. ^ "List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the U.S. Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival," SS Shinano Maru, October 8, 1903, in National Archives and Record Administraion microfilm roll M1383, "Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at Seattle, Washington, 1890-1957," Roll 2 (Apr. 17, 1900, SS GOODWIN - Jan. 17, 1904, SS TOSA MARU).
  10. ^ Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 25, 1903.
  11. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore. Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children, Joseph Bucklin Bishop, ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919, pp. 113-114.
  12. ^ Brousse, Michel and David Matsumoto. Judo in the U.S.: A Century of Dedication. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2005, pp. 23-24.
  13. ^ New York World, October 26, 1902.
  14. ^ Anonymous. "Training the Helpless Flapper to Fight Her Own Battles," Literary Digest, August 27, 1927, p. 47.
  15. ^ Earns, Lane. "Nagasaki Kyoruchi no Seiyojin (Westerners of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement)".[3]
  16. ^ New York Sun, April 17, 1904.
  17. ^ a b Svinth, Joseph R. "Professor Yamashita Goes to Washington."[4]
  18. ^ "Jiu-Jitsu for Women," Sandow's Magazine, December 7, 1905, with annotations by Joseph R. Svinth.[5] Despite what one sometimes reads,[6] Grace Davis Lee was not related to General Robert E. Lee.
  19. ^ Army and Navy Journal, March 25, 1905.
  20. ^ Sweetman, Jack. The U.S. Naval Academy: An Illustrated History, 2d edition, revised by Thomas J. Cutler. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Academy Press, 1995, p. 269.
  21. ^ Memorandum from Charles J. Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy, to Chief, Bureau of Navigation, dated November 3, 1905, in US Naval Academy archives.
  22. ^ Letter from Superintendent of Naval Academy to Chief of Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, dated May 4, 1906, in US Naval Academy Archives.
  23. ^ Letter from Imperial Japanese Embassy to the Bureau of Navigation, The Navy Department, dated Dec. 19, 1906, in US Naval Academy archives.
  24. ^ "Do's and Don'ts in Learning Judo by Yoshiaki Yamashita," JudoInfo.com.[7]
  25. ^ For a description of such an event in Kobe in 1925, see Frank O'Neill, "The Brown Man in the Field of Sports," The Ring, November 1925, p. 19.
  26. ^ Letters from Sarah Mayer to Gunji Koizumi, annotated by Joseph R. Svinth.[8][9]
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