Revista de Artes Marciales Asiaticas | 2026
Authors: De Crée C.
DOI: 10.18002/rama.v21i1.2601
Journal: Revista de Artes Marciales Asiaticas
Year: 2026
Publisher: University of Leon
Document Type: Article
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
Cited by: 0
This paper aims to describe, contextualize and critically analyze the historical origin and background, circumstances, structure and logic that underpin Kōdōkan jūdō’s gokyō-no-waza and classification of throws outside of the gokyō. To do so, we have applied historical methods and source criticism allowing us to uncover hitherto unknown facts and to offer a critical analysis of the gokyō’s foundations and previously published hypotheses. With kata prior to the creation of the gokyō being the only crutch that Kanō’s assistants could lean on when having to teach the Kōdōkan’s exponentially growing number of jūdō students, there was a dire need for a didactically organized teaching plan of technical progression. It is to that end that in 1895 some of Kanō’s most senior students and himself came up with the gokyō-no-waza or “techniques of the five teachings” as their standard syllabus of throwing techniques. Today referred to as the kyū gokyō-no-waza, this first syllabus consisted of 42 techniques. In response to the evolution of jūdō, a revised syllabus, the shin gokyō-no-waza consisting of 40 techniques was launched in 1920 based on the input of six of Kanō’s leading students. The techniques within the gokyō are organized foremost with attention to being easy for breakfalling. Between 1982 and 2017, the Kōdōkan expanded their syllabus to 68 throws by creating two categories of techniques outside of the gokyō, i.e. the habukareta-waza and the shinmeishō-no-waza. In this paper we propose to add a new category of 25 historically documented jūdō throws, which we have named the jidai-okure-no-waza [obsolete techniques] hence bringing the total recognized jūdō throws to 93. © 2026 by the authors.
Combat sports; gokyo; history; Japan; Jigoro Kano; Judo; Kodokan; martial arts