The sport of Judo was founded by Professor Jigoro Kano in 1882. He was born on the 28th of October in the seaside town of Mikage near Kobe, Japan. His family moved to Tokyo in 1871.
At the age of 14 he was sent to a private school run by Europeans, to improve his English and German.
At 18 years old he enrolled in the martial art of jujitsu at the Tenjin Shinyo ryu school under Fukuda Hachinosuke. Jigoro Kano was a sickly child, suffering one sickness after another and enrolled in jujitsu to improve his health and to learn self-defense to protect himself against bullies.
Jigoro Kano studied many forms of jujitsu from the various jujitsu schools in Japan. Around 1880 he started to rethink the jujitsu techniques he had learned. Jigoro Kano thought there was unnecessary roughness and crudeness in the jujitsu techniques, and it was difficult to practice without injury.
He decided to combine the best techniques from the various jujitsu schools into one system. He ommitted the more dangerous techniques so it could be practised as a competitive sport. By 1882, Jigoro Kano had pulled the best grappling and throwing techniques from jujitsu, added a few of his own to form his new sport of Judo and called it Kodokan Judo.
Kodokan means "a place to study the way" and Judo breaks down to ju (gentle) and do (way or path) or "the gentle way".
Jigoro Kano's first Judo school was established in the Eishoji Buddhist temple in Kamakura, Tokyo and started with nine students in it's first year.
Rivalry developed between the two martial art's of jujitsu and Judo and in 1886 a contest was held between them to decide which was the superior martial art once and for all. Jigoro Kano selected fifteen of his best students who won all the bouts exept two, which were drawn, establishing Judo as the superior martial art.
Professor Jigoro Kano died in May 1938.