We Should Live - Ben Bateman

Judo is a Japanese sport similar to American wrestling. Those not familiar with it might call it a martial art, but I don’t think that phrase fits. In its most literal sense, a martial art is something that you practice and study to be proficient in war. The most literal martial arts would include only kendo (way of the sword) and other weapon-based arts. If you were a Japanese peasant a thousand years ago, those were the types of arts that in wartime might win you some armor, a decent weapon, and a unit assignment away from the unarmored and minimally trained peasants wielding sharp sticks.

So it’s a mild stretch to put the label “martial arts” on punch-and-kick disciplines like Karate or Tae Kwon Do. No doubt many soldiers have survived battle due to their unarmed combat skills—but I bet that it’s rare. If your goal is surviving combat in a modern war, then your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
So if the point of unarmed martial arts isn’t martial, then what is the point? On that question, there is a shocking lack of unanimity.

Street Fights

One purpose is to be able to win a street fight. If you’re walking down a dark alley at night, or if someone is menacing you in a bar, then martial arts will help you kick the bad guy’s butt. Few men made it through boyhood without some fantasy along those lines.

But street fights are dangerous, because they don’t have rules. In the boyish fantasy, the hero faces the bad guys one at a time in unarmed combat, and each slinks off in shame as he’s defeated. But most real-life bad guys don’t do that. They use guns, knives, or broken beer bottles. They get some friends to achieve overwhelming numbers, or they strike with surprise. And even if the bad guys fight and lose honorably, as the boyhood fantasy demands, the hero has no assurance that he won’t spend the next several hours in an interrogation room, explaining his actions to a skeptical policeman.

The fact is that true street fights are horribly dangerous for all involved regardless of their skill, and anyone with the sense to train in a martial art to win one should also have the sense not to spend time in places where they’re likely to encounter trouble. There are exceptions, such as policemen, bouncers, or bodyguards. But for the rest of us, training in a martial art to be able to win barroom brawls is an appealing but ultimately silly fantasy. It’s potentially dangerous, too: If you’re dim enough to think that any martial art can reliably protect you in a free-for-all fight, then you might also be dim enough to fail to avoid those fights.

Sport

So for most, the point of a martial art is definitely not to beat up random bad guys. For a large number of martial arts practitioners—probably most—a martial art is a sport much like any other. You train in a martial art to compete in tournaments. The sport has rules enforced by referees. Participants use protective gear to avoid injuries. There are occasionally injuries, of course, but that’s true in many sports.
Judo was created just over 100 years ago by Jigoro Kano. He founded the here with those here. The first shows what throws look like in a well-run classroom; the second is what they look like in competition.

In the classroom, the throws have a precision of movement. They are attempts to reach an ideal of movement. The student shouldn’t worry about whether his version of the throw will actually defeat an opponent; his job is simply to learn the form. If the student tries to become ‘effective’ too early, then he’ll likely lock himself into bad habits. In the classroom, the question isn’t what works; it’s what’s right.
Competition is the opposite. While the rules forbid various techniques, they do not require strict adherence to the traditional throws or holds. If it works and doesn’t violate a specific rule, then the logic of competition says that you should do it.

This article by Steve Scott presents the pure-sport perspective. The author argues that it’s nonsense to even try to distinguish the ideal from what works, because what works is by (his) definition ideal. And that’s true if you accept his premise that the point of Judo is to win tournaments.

But suppose that you don’t want to win tournaments, but you still want to learn Judo. This article presents the alternative to Judo as a sport: Judo is a way of life. It promotes physical fitness, grace of movement, and serenity of mind. This was Kano’s real aim, and most of today’s Judo misses it.

If you want to win a physical competition, then your best strategy is typically to specialize. Consider the first part of this article by Masahiko Kimura, a Judo champion from the thirties, forties, and fifties. The author’s favorite move is Osoto Gari, with which he becomes so powerful that he can reliably give other Judo experts concussions. His opponents also had favorite moves, and much of the strategy he describes involves finding out what each opponent’s favorite move is, and countering it.

While that was obviously an effective way to win Judo tournaments, it is also obviously not what Kano intended—and not ideal in terms of overall physical health and balance. A limited set of moves develops a limited set of muscles. It narrows you, and limits you.

This narrowing through competition isn’t unique to Judo. It applies in most competitions. There are few games in which intense competition does not yield a tiny set of viable strategies. (Those few games are the eternal classics, such as Go and Chess.)

Even with a very good game, take the competition too seriously and you’ll suck the fun out of it. You’ll reduce it to a ritual, a contest of talents. And you’ll come to enjoy only the winning, not the game itself.
Why do we play games at all? The objective answer is probably instinct. Men especially have a primal itch to scratch; we are born expecting to kill or be killed to establish dominance in mating. Civilization put an end to most of that, and I hope we can all agree that it was for the best. But the urge remains, and men satisfy it with games.

Now try a completely different question: Why should we play games? Scratching the instinctual competitive itch is fun, but we know that it’s pointless fun. In a larger sense, winning a game means nothing.

So is there any point, in a larger sense, to playing games? Yes. Games make us stronger. With more strength, we are more likely to accomplish objectively useful goals. And if you approach competition with this goal in mind, then you will always emerge victorious.

So why learn Judo? Don’t learn it to beat up the bad guys. And don’t learn it to win tournaments. Learn it because it’s good for you. It’ll make you strong. It’ll give you better balance. It’ll broaden your range of motion. It’ll improve your flexibility. It can teach you to deal with real-life problems more subtly and effectively. And it might even bring you closer to enlightenment.