h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I enjoyed the article and thought it was well written. However Judo does not mean "Gentle Way", it actully means "Compliant Way". The philosophy is by being compliant to an attack the defender can use the assailant's strength and aggression against the assailant himself.

Judo is certainly not gentle as if it was it would not be affective in overcoming and defeating an attacker.

i totally agree with u its ment to be that though but i think judo is a quite violent sport im a judo player my self

The standard translation for Judo is Gentle Way.

The actual term of Ju is difficult to define, but it IS gentle in the sense that the exponent whould not use strength to overcome his opponent. Instead, he should use the weight, inertia and strength of his opponent to beat him.

Ju is the opposite of ken, as in Ken-do. In kendo, a blow is negated by an equal blow, cancelling out the attack. In Judo, you'd side step the blow and then use the opponent's movement and inertia to throw them.

As this indicates the lack of aggression and strength on the part of the judo person, and is certainly not compliant, I feel that the Gentle Way is a more appropriate description.

Something else one might consider in explaining the translation of "judo" to English is the fact that the Japanese language is structured quite differently than English. There are not as many words, so they use the same word in many different contexts and may change the meaning of the word significantly by tone, inflection, and context. Dr. Kano was a jujitsu master before developing his judo. Indeed judo was initially referred to as Kano Jujitsu.

Dr Kano wanted to develop a sport form of jujitsu that could be practiced with fewer catastrophic injuries than the other forms of jujitsu designed to cripple ot kill the enemy. In that way, judo, though explosive and potentially violent at times, is "gentler" than earlier forms of jujitsu. There is no suffix in the japanese language to modiify the word "ju" into degrees of gentleness as ther are in English. We can say gentle ... gentler ... gentlest. Dr. Kano had only "ju" to express all three.