Paper short abstract:

Decisions made for the survival of judo under the American Occupation and later for its inclusion as an international sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics created internal debates about judo that can be understood as a conflict between the sacred (traditional judo) and the profane (sport judo).

Paper long abstract:

Judo was founded by Kanō Jigorō in 1882 as an explicitly scientific and modern martial art. Much as with the roughly contemporaneous Muscular Christianity, human development was central concern along with the more obvious physical training of the body. Furthermore, Kanō also argued judo had something inherently Japanese about it, even as he sent his disciples on missions abroad to spread it internationally. The inherently Japanese aspect became emphasized domestically with the rise of radical ethnic nationalism in the 1930s, but even without this prewar shift, judo itself has frequently functioned as what David Chidester has called an "Authentic Fake," or something that is not explicitly religious but performs "authentic religious work" as they aim to rise "above...the ordinary [and] engage the sacred." Decisions made in the postwar for the survival of the martial art under the American Occupation and later for its recognition as a truly international martial sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics had the side effect of raising internal debates about the true nature of judo that can be understood as a conflict between the sacred (traditional judo) and the profane (competition/sport judo). Efforts by the Kōdōkan leadership to reassure Japanese judoka of the correctness of these decisions reveal a deep internal concern with the meaning of judo itself as something more than a purely physical practice.