Kanō Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎, 10 December 1860[note 1] - 4 May 1938[5]) was a Japanese judoka, educator, politician, and the founder of judo.

Well-known mottoes attributed to Kanō include "maximum efficiency minimal effort" (精力善用, seiryoku zen'yō) and "mutual welfare and benefit" (自他共栄, jita kyōei).

He was frequently bullied at Ikuei due to this small size and his intellectual nature,[11] to the point other students sometimes dragged him out of the school buildings to beat him up,[12] so he wished he were stronger in order to defend himself.

[13] One day, Nakai Baisei, a friend of the family who was a member of the shōgun's guard, mentioned that jūjutsu was an excellent form of physical training, and showed Kanō a few techniques by which a smaller man might overcome a larger and stronger opponent.

Seeing potential for self-defense on this, Kanō decided he wanted to learn the art, despite Nakai's insistence that such training was out of date and dangerous.

Yagi, in turn, referred Kanō to Fukuda Hachinosuke, a bonesetter who taught Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū in a 10-mat room adjacent to his practice.

He gave beginners a short description of the technique and had them engage in free practice (randori) in order to teach through experience.

Other people involved in this demonstration included the jūjutsu teachers Fukuda Hachinosuke and Iso Masatomo, and Kanō's training partner Godai Ryusaku.

[24] She also asked that the dojo remain open under Kanō's leadership, and he did assume this teaching responsibility for a time,[25] but he soon decided that he should train more before accepting the duty of being a lead instructor.

[17][18] Iikubo issued Kanō a formal jūjutsu rank and teaching credential, namely a certificate of menkyo in Kitō-ryū, dated October 1883.

[32] Kanō continued to offer instruction in Kitō-ryū jūjutsu for a few years after this, and the limited records documented from the era show that he was further granted menkyo kaiden: a hontai-no-maki scroll of Kitō-ryū Takenaka-ha (issued in June 1885 to Saigō Shirō) survives which bears the signature of Kanō Jigorō personally.

[2] To name the gradually evolving system he was teaching at the Kodokan, Kanō revived a term that Terada Kan'emon, the fifth headmaster of the Kitō-ryū, had adopted when he founded his own style, the Jikishin-ryū: "jūdō".

As he wrote in 1898, "By taking together all the good points I had learned of the various schools and adding thereto my own inventions and discoveries, I devised a new system for physical culture and moral training as well as for winning contests.

"[13] However, after judo was introduced into the Japanese public schools, a process that took place between 1906 and 1917, there was increasing standardization of kata and tournament technique.

[36][37] Kanō had only a handful of students at this time, but they improved their technique through regular contests with local police jūjutsu teams.

Harrison wrote:[42] all [Japanese judo] dojo including the Kodokan hold special summer and winter exercises.

The reason, said Japan Times on 30 March 1913, was "so that this wonderful institution might be able to reconstruct, for that is what it really does, the moral and physical nature of the Japanese youth, without its founder's personal attention.

On 18 April 1888, Kanō and Reverend Thomas Lindsay presented a lecture called "Jiujitsu: The Old Samurai Art of Fighting without Weapons" to the Asiatic Society of Japan.

[45] Being an idealist, Kanō had broad aims for judo, which he saw as something that simultaneously encompassed self-defense, physical culture, and moral behavior.

Kata, which literally means Form, is a formal system of prearranged exercises, including, besides the aforementioned actions, hitting and kicking and the use of weapons, according to rules under which each combatant knows beforehand exactly what his opponent is going to do.

[10] He graduated in July 1882, and the following month he began work as a professor, fourth class, at the Gakushuin, or Peers School, in Tokyo.

[54] Soon after returning to Japan, he resumed his post as president of Tokyo Higher Normal School,[51] and he remained in this position until his retirement on 16 January 1920.

Considering that he majored in political science and economics, Kanō's family thought that after graduating from university, he would pursue a career in some government ministry.

The goals of Kanō's educational philosophies and methods (indeed, the goals of most Japanese educational programs of the early 20th century) were: to develop minds, bodies, and spirits in equal proportion; to increase patriotism and loyalty, especially to the Emperor; to teach public morality; and to increase physical strength and stamina, especially for the purpose of making young men more fit for military service.

[57] Calisthenics, especially as done in the huge formations favored at the time, could be boring, and at the high school and college levels, games such as baseball and rugby were more often spectator sports than a practical source of physical exercise for the masses.

Kanō was the official representative of Japan to the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912, and he was involved in organizing the Far Eastern Championship Games held in Osaka during May 1917.

As he put it in a letter to Britain's Gunji Koizumi in 1936:[64] I have been asked by people of various sections as to the wisdom and the possibility of Judo being introduced at the Olympic Games.

Judo should be as free as art and science from external influences – political, national, racial, financial or any other organised interest.

In May 1938, Kanō died at sea, during a voyage that he made as member of the IOC on board the NYK Line motor ship Hikawa Maru.

[72] Although there is no known contemporary documentation to support this claim, Kanō's opposition to Japanese militarism was well-known, and many others who also opposed it were allegedly assassinated.