Education and Self-Cultivation in Early Kōdōkan judo

When Kōdōkan judo was founded by Kanō Jigorō in 1882 it intrinsically harbored strong educational goals that were based on neo-Confucian thought as well as ideas of Western philosophers and educators, including Dewey, Mill, Bentham, and Spencer. To gain a deeper understanding of the educational philosophy and his ideas on self-cultivation during the formative years, I will approach judo from the historical context and the perspective of contemporary educational philosophy. Based on an analysis of contemporaneous primary texts I will pursue the question, what idea of ‘man’ judo is based and what the goal of self-cultivation in judo training is.