The Shintaro Higashi Show - Philosophy of Judo
Episode Date: July 27, 2021Judo is not just a physical martial art-- it has core guiding philosophical principles that can be applied to all aspects of life. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter talk about what these principles ...are and how they have affected their lives. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!
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hello everyone welcome back to the shintaro higashi show with peter you today we have a
very interesting episode about judo philosophies that's right very interesting stuff so you know
yeah judo is not just a martial art it has some like guiding principles or philosophy
so to speak so that's right it's not just taking someone down choking them cranking on their arm
there's a lot of philosophies embedded right in judo as designed by jaguar okano who was
the educator right that's how he called himself so
right it's more of a like stuff you know both physical and the mental side and then they how
they kind of go together all right so why don't we just start with uh the name judo like what does
that mean yeah judo and why you know some people might be familiar with the history it used to be called jiu-jitsu
and then yeah kano right translate change into judo so what what does judo mean why the change
yada yada let's start with there gotcha all right first ju-jitsu yeah okay those two words very
important ju it's gentle right jutsu technique so the gentle technique was sort of the original jiu-jitsu i
know now uh with the translation people spell it jiu-jitsu right that's sort of a thing but
originally it's jiu-jitsu yeah so the phonetic spelling was juju tsu was sort of the way it was
sort of originally spelled now it's jiu-j-S-U was sort of the way it was sort of originally spelled. Now it's Jiu-Jitsu, right?
That's like sort of how people kind of evolved the term.
And, you know, of course, westernization and all this stuff, right?
With translations, things kind of change a little bit.
And now it's like the common way of spelling Jiu-Jitsu is J-I-U-Jitsu, J-I-T-S-U, right?
So anyway, Jiu-Jitsu, gentle technique.
Judo is the gentle way right
right so when kano started judo he was like i don't want to do kicks and punches because you
can't really full-blown train those things and the whole concept of judo was for smaller people
to take down bigger people weaker people to take down stronger people and uh that's how it was born the gentle way so what what does way mean here
what what what's the way man the path the path the path to like i guess nirvana to a better place to
be right to striving for something greater right a lot of people don't know this but kano wasn't
just responsible for judo like creating judo but, but he had a very big part politically in ending Japanese isolationism
and having the Japanese people reintroduce to the Olympic world.
So he had a lot of political efforts.
He was part of the IOC and stuff, right?
If I remember correctly.
Yeah, all that stuff.
It's funny because they did a documentary about Jigoro Kano the other day like in like a japanese soap opera series or whatever it was like a docu-series
situation and i was like oh shoot there's gonna be a lot of judo in it there was no judo
he was yeah like in the opening credits like you see jigo okano like doing judo and like
teaching little kids and they're doing break falls and ah like all this stuff but that was it it's
like i was like watching like where's the judo right right you know yeah because he was like a key figure in the modernization of japan in the yeah big time
he was like we gotta do we gotta do stuff like i am pro western right culture and then latin
america and japan and like work together and do all this stuff and you know maybe i'm wrong
maybe i don't know i think that's right like yeah but like i
didn't read up and study this stuff some people are like historians when it comes to like martial
arts and i'm not one of those people some people are like an encyclopedia they consume everything
about judo and watch every international tournament i'm not like that so take what i say with a grain
of salt just some disclosure but i think that the general tone is that he's he wasn't just a martial art
teacher he was a politician skilled diplomat yeah yeah that's right all those things and you know
more than anything he wanted to be known as the educator right educator he was like i want to
use judo to better society and that's where all like the societal stuff right play this philosophy
stuff comes into play so the reason why he decided to change from
techniques to way or path it's because he probably wanted to bring in that education side of things
it's not just about like yeah you know killing people like back in the day some people think
it's like he wanted to go away from like the martial side and make it a lifestyle situation
right to better your situation better your life right can you improve your life doing this martial art what are the
benefits you can reap from it long term right right as a lifelong practice of educating oneself
and personal growth right so that's appropriate judo so that is the start of it not very gentle
that is i think that is the boat yeah i guess it's gentle in a way that because
you know uh well we'll get into that i think it kind of both the word gentle and way you know
encompasses everything so you kind of touched upon it like how he wanted a martial art that
could enable weaker or smaller people to take down bigger stronger people so i guess
there's a term for it in a way i guess in judo
yeah that's a good one so minimum effort yeah maximum efficiency minimum effort maximum
efficiency yeah yeah so that so what how
so i guess that is a gentle side of judo would you say yeah minimum effort maximum efficiency
i mean connell himself said why drive down to the pizzeria if you could seamless your your
he's so prescient that he he could always see the 40 yeah exactly i mean and i think it you know it it's in the physical
side of things if you know you always we in judo you'd be focused on like the kudushi the
unbalancing and then how to yeah you know take down someone without forcing it and then how how
what do you think uh that philosophy or serik is in your minimum
effort maximum efficiency it comes into play in terms of like the mental mental side of things
in judo mental side of things in judo i mean you know you don't want to be forceful right
all the stuff that you do right you want to embrace the stuff and then you don't want to
exert unnecessary energy that's really what it's about. You know, and life is about that too,
right? Finding efficiencies, finding redundancies and getting rid of it, right? So that really does
play with your everyday life. I mean, if you're in the office, right, you want to get rid of
redundancies. You want to get rid of employees that manage up, manage down, push off work to
the side. They don't really actually do any work. You know, you want to get rid of that kind of
stuff. Maybe some people are very good at doing that you know
who knows right but like that's what it's about you know minimum effort maximum efficiency and
you know it's like embedded in the judo even from the beginning when you learn ukemi right right and
it goes coincides with the gentle way of like embracing the fall right if you put your hand
down like you're taking that force onto your body but if you could do a rollout right right right would you say it's a lot less effort would you say in
your personal life you follow this principle of minimum effort maximum efficiency oh yeah man
amazon prime same amazon pressure maybe it's got too easy to do to follow this nowadays this is a little bit a little bit too
too convenient yes for sure but i i do always have a mindset of like man why you know am i doing
something a certain way what can i do to improve upon this like how can i automate certain things
right it's like i'm always thinking that way and i think uh i mean i kind of want to say like yes
it has a lot to do with judo but you know every self-help book out there every self-help guru right it kind of
sort of preaches this stuff it doesn't mean that you you should be lazy it should be it means that
like oh it seems according to what you just said it means more about improving the ways you're doing things so that you could yeah achieve the maximum
you know uh results without exerting too much energy i guess yeah yeah well because this is
the thing right like yes i can physically push somebody into a position and force the gripping
and this and that but now i'm a little bit tired now if i want to exert that energy i could that i
could have spent on doing something else right now i've spent a lot of that right right it's like sort of
resource management if you will and then you see like a great uh tough guy that's like a yellow
belt or something like he's grinding and he's putting this right he's coming forward and he
has a great tank gas tank but he's burning it all right which is okay but like now you're not really focused on
spending it on getting out of bad positions right right you're not saving it for certain executions
of certain positions and techniques right you're spending it in the wrong places right and you want
to and you know there's sort of a idea of like oh no you want to go hard you want to exert but you
want to save those days right if you're getting pinned you have to start bridging and turning and going a little bit nuts there's a lot of
you have to force yourself out of that position a little bit right right to create space sometimes
you just physically need to push somebody right you can't just outmaneuver someone because if
someone's physically holding you down right and restricting your movement you have to be able to
physically create that space and you want to use that energy that you have in the gas tank during that time you know but if you're like jumping up and down
going nuts and going for sodas and trying to force bad throws and you've already sort of sapped and
now you're you got taken down and you're getting pinned now you might not have that energy this
bad i see right so so it's not about like not using energy at all it's about using energy you
need to use energy like you said like when you're, you have to spend your energy to get out of that position.
But that will be the efficient way of spending that energy.
Yeah.
Like if I could automate certain things like in life or at work and then those things are taken care of.
Now I could use that energy that I would have spent on that on something else.
It's kind of like opportunity cost. And that's what really kind of circles back to so you're
right it's not about laziness it's about resource management yeah that's right i'm gonna coin that
hashtag judo resource management yeah so like a t-shirt very useful concept minimum effort
maximum efficiency so there's another pillar uh in the philosophy of judo
called yep uh mean which means mutual welfare right and respect and benefit yeah yeah respect
benefit mutual welfare right and you know like it's not specific to judo right if you've ever
read stephen covey's seven habits of highly effective
people that's one of the things that were the first things the tenants is like win win yeah
you win i win let's make each other better right right this idea of a zero-sum game in competitive
sports right i when you lose that shouldn't be like that when you're doing judo that's why some
people argue like kana wasn't about competitive judo he was a lot more than competitive judo right right which is something that i kind of try to remind myself of every day
right right see and then you kind of weave it you all mentioned a lot about your philosophy
where you don't try to make like two uh two classes of students in your dojo where they're the you know first class citizens the
competitors and you know yeah that's right that's right i mean there's naturally already a hierarchy
with the belt system right right now when you add on like oh that guy competes this guy doesn't
compete oh let's give a round of applause to the people who did go to the competition
now the people who don't compete feel like second-class citizens right that's not a that's not a good look right uh it's there if you want it it's there if you want to
test yourself and try it great but it doesn't make you better than the person that's at anexia
who it's not for them right and then you know what i mean so that you know you
jita koe the philosophy jita kyo mutual welfare kind of comes into that because if
ultimately the competitors need non-competitors to train and like they do you know and then the
non-competitors need the competitors to learn you know fancier techniques or you know more
you know advanced techniques yeah some of the best people i know who are the most skilled
technician and knowledgeable people are not competitors.
Right.
Take a look at this guy, Brian Glick.
Right, right.
He's a jiu-jitsu guy that teaches me jiu-jitsu.
He's never competed.
I think he competed in like two things and he won it or something.
Right, right.
But he's an unbelievable practitioner.
Right, right.
Lifelong practitioner.
He does judo with me for years.
He's a judo black belt, jiu-jitsu black belt.
He did weight tie for many years.
He's a savant. Right, right. He trains three, four hours a day every day for the last 20 something years and he's so knowledgeable he has the communication skills to teach you
he embraces both like the judo philosophies i guess yeah yeah he really does you know and uh
let's take a look at a guy like that. Yeah. You know, didn't compete.
Right.
It's fine.
You don't need to compete.
Right.
A lot of the times people like, hey, I want to go to this competition.
It's like, why?
Right.
Right.
Let's talk about that first.
Why do you want to compete?
Right. You know, but going back to the idea of mutual welfare and benefit, if you're in the training
room, you have to have this sort of collectivist mindset.
We talked about this the other day, but like, let's make each other better. other better right person next to me makes me better i make the person next to me better
even though there's a skill gap right i'm a you know whatever belt and this person's or whatever
belt but right i'm gonna sort of handicap myself so this person gets something out of it and i'm
gonna get something out of it because i'm working on certain things. The goal, if it's me versus him to beat this person, then, of course, with a skill gap, weight gap, size difference, weight difference, strength difference, like I'm going to be able to beat this person.
Right.
And then the person who's the best in the dojo, if the goal is to beat the person in front of you, like they're really not going to get much out of training because they're just going around beating everybody up this right i guess uh personally this is something i had to
work on a lot because when i approached randori is especially when i was younger you know you
remember you talked we talked about this like i i used to yeah i used to treat randori as like a
zero-sum thing like oh i need to win i need to throw
everyone like a go hard we'll still never really get away from that it's always a battle right
right right but then it's like and you need some rounds like that because you need to go in and say
hey i've never worked out with this guy from japan that i've never seen before and he's a tough
lefty like i need to try my stuff to see what works what doesn't right go back to the drawing board
and then figure some of this stuff right so the next time so now it becomes like a gamified thing
right for your own self-improvement you know what it matters do i know what this person does do i
not know what this person does you right what did that actually happen i just i feel like
making it up as i go yeah yeah it's it actually happened to me the other day so
i'm gonna try i'm i've been working on that but i think that's uh it's it's competitive but it's
has some mutual understanding because that yeah japanese visitor you know he he knew that i wanted to you know really try things out with them try to really
actually go hard and then once when there's understanding like that that is mutual benefit
like we're trying to improve you know help each other improve yeah yeah and even competition right
like you're going in you're not used to fighting a lot of these people going out there and figuring
what they do immediately off the bat right as opposed to like being in the training
room it's like oh this guy does that he into san agi clapper does this he switches left you know
he does that going in cold not knowing what the other person does figuring it out as you're going
along like that's a whole nother skill in itself right right so every person there is also making
you better too because you're developing that specific skill set.
And also competing on the pressure, beating anxiety, all those different things come into play.
Right.
So if you're in that room with 20 people in the bracket, right, you're making each other better.
Right.
Yeah.
And so that's why you got to get your matches in sometimes. Right.
If that's for you so it's like every aspect of it you know
of judo
can be
we need to frame it
in a
way that we can
benefit
all the
everyone involved
yeah
and then you know
when you look at it like that
then it becomes a growth thing
right
but then you gotta look at it
from a cost benefit analysis too
it's like okay
you know
what's the benefit of me
reaping out of this thing
but what's the risk?
Right?
I take this risk to go to this thing to learn and develop a couple of these ideas, but what's the risk of injury?
Do I work with my body?
That kind of really matters too.
Can I go into the office with a black eye and would that look poorly amongst the partners?
That's another thing that matters as well.
Do I work with my hands?
If you're a surgeon and you're relying on your hands to do it,
in the dojo, you could train and do certain things,
but the risk is low.
In a tournament, someone takes an armbar on you,
they're not going to give you the opportunity to tap.
They're going to crank on the thing.
They're going to rip your grips off
yeah then you're going to go in and have surgery
and your arm is shaking
now you can't
I think that
is almost like
also minimal effort maximum efficiency
in a way because if you look at
your life holistically
you have to figure out how to
get most out of judo with you know without risk
you know yeah cost benefit analysis you know a risk to reward ratio right that sort of stuff
comes into play people think hey i want to compete because i want to test myself okay yeah great but
have you done this yeah risk calculation right right what's the risk what is the cost what is
the benefits that you're going
to reap from it and you know that has a lot to do with efficiency right right because you don't want
to you know in poker they call it pot out yeah right so you know you don't want to risk everything
for a very small reward right exactly and that has a lot to do with the judo mindset you know
so no need to feel pressure to compete you know if do it if you think it's the
right avenue for your growth personal growth yeah yeah yeah cool yeah yeah so those are the i'd say
the two pillars like the big things about the philosophy of judo right and you just told me
about an interesting another concept and it doesn't
you said it doesn't really pertain specific to judo yeah but uh yeah it's like academics and
athletics work together in equals i see right because you can't just be jacked with no knowledge
right you just can't you can't just grapple with no ability to think about it.
And then, right?
And there's people who are out there who are training, who are very good, but they could
only do what they're told.
Right, right.
Right?
You don't want to be that person.
You want to develop the academic mind.
You want to be outside the box thinkers.
Why does this technique work?
How can I create this newer system, newer ideas, right?
And it's not just specific to martial
arts you can't just do martial arts your whole life right right and then i mean there are people
who do it and you love it you great yeah but like that's not something that i would suggest right
like guy walks into my dojo quit your job and come to the dojo seven days a week and then you're
gonna be like an indentured turk and now you're just gonna train eight hours a day and this is
your life from now on it'll make you better like no i don't i don't believe in that at all right right
right go to school do your thing have your career come to the dojo use it as a tool to make your
life better right boom right it has to be equal even right you can't just do this thing unless
you're me this is how i feed every my family you know what i mean you do other things you do podcasts
and then you went to you went to school you make videos and i think yeah you're in school make
videos yeah you're very academic in your own way everything ties back to judo but i think
it's when you say academics is equal to you know martial arts it academics doesn't mean like oh
you got to do well in school it's more about like you're not just school right it's not
you know you have to be a thinking thinking person yeah and you have to apply that mentality right
of like if you're a plumber always try to be a better plumber right right it's like uh the
japanese philosophy of kaizen yeah i see yeah It's like 1% better every single day.
This is what you do.
Might as well do it good.
You're going to get better at it every day.
1% every day.
Just a little bit better.
Yields big, big results.
Big, big changes down the line.
Stuff like that.
Take pride in what you do.
Right, right.
And Japan really kind of pushes this thinking, pushes the collectivist mindset.
And it's embedded in Judo.
It really is. like kind of pushes this thinking pushes the collectivist mindset and it's embedded in judo right he is you know it's interesting because a lot of these concepts in japan are the opposite
of sort of the western thing right of like individualistic yeah right i want to you know
win and make well there's nothing wrong with right it's a balance you know i subscribe to this too
right right yes it's a balance a balance yeah because you know the collectivist culture of japan has its own prop set of problems as well
as the benefits absolutely so does the individualistic culture of america you know yeah
so we we want to pick and choose kind of like yeah like the mutual welfare philosophy we want to
figure out what will be the best combination of the two yeah yeah man
it's like you need that sort of counter checks and balances system because you can't have everybody
who's on the right right you can't have everyone who's on the left you can't have everybody this
democrat running everything you can't have everyone republican right there's some fiscal views
republican side and this and then checks and balances and shifts and then goes back and forth
and nothing ever gets done but you know we're all moving forward kind of right so that's kind of like how it's got
to be right right the balance let's talk about that's the next episode judo and politics period
oh man i think that might be our best episode yet yeah what are peter's oh man yeah everyone
wants to know everyone wants to know cool Cool. So we covered
like big four things.
The name Judo, the gentle way,
minimum effort, maximum efficiency,
Jita Kyo-e, mutual welfare,
Bunburi-odo,
academics, and martial arts go together.
So anything else
we missed?
That's really the philosophies of judo.
You know, and I sort of have personal judo philosophies, right?
You know, synergy and all that stuff.
And, you know, but that really does go back to minimum effort, maximum efficiency.
Which are welfare, yeah.
These sort of tenets really cover a lot.
Right.
And you kind of like talk about it all day.
Right.
We have specific dojo
that loops back to this.
That started
with the Kukushikan University system.
My father really pushed this
mentality at the dojo.
It helps develop the community
and the culture of the dojo.
We have that.
That really covers
judo philosophy. um apply to your
regular life that's really what it's about yeah you know and how can i right mutual welfare and
benefit and respect is like that's something that i always try to but i mean it's not specific to
judo yeah a lot of this stuff is not specific to judo yeah but it's nice that there's a martial
art slash sport slash grappling art that has these ideas embedded in the thing right not just like go out there and
kick that guy's ass yeah you know what i mean so yeah yeah so i think uh i think a lot of times
you know people kind of know about it about those things at a superficial level but i mean i'm glad we got to talk about it in more
depth and hopefully this conversation will be helpful for everyone so um thanks for listening
guys and uh stay tuned for the next episode