Tradition Unbound

The two barefoot, kimono-clad contestants bowed, gripped sleeves, and stared at each other with furious concentration. The silent S.R.O. crowd in Paris' Pierre de Coubertin Stadium strained to catch the first muscular move. With The Netherlands' hulking (6 ft. 5 in. 238 lbs.) Anton Geesink fighting Japan's smaller (6 ft. 1 in. 198 lbs.) Koji Sone, much more than the judo (literally, "gentle way'') championship of the world was at stake. This was a challenge to Japan's dominance over her own national sport, and it was the ultimate test of one of the oldest traditions of judo: the wistful idea that a well-trained judoist can whip a larger opponent in hand-to-hand combat.

Just 8 min. and 12 sec. later, after a makikomi-harai-goshi (wraparound sweeping hip throw), an okuri-ashi-harai (sweeping ankle throw) and a mune-gatame (chest hold), the Japanese lay exhausted on the tat ami (straw mat). The tall Dutchman towered over him in triumph. It was the most humiliating blow to Japanese pride since the Marianas turkey shoot, the Pacific air battle that polished off the remnants of Japanese air power in World War II.

Horror-stricken Japanese judokas scrabbled for an alibi. The new champion had traveled to Tokyo earlier in the year to spy on Japanese tactics, they said. The Japanese team had not had enough money to return the "honor." A judo professor at Tokyo's Police University blamed the loss on the manner in which U.S. occupation forces revised Japan's education system. A Tokyo nutrition expert argued that Sone had been weakened by eating Parisian breakfasts of coffee and croissants instead of Japanese dried seaweed, bean-paste soup, hot rice and raw egg.

The International Judo Federation came to a much more logical conclusion: it decided to divide contestants into four weight classes for the 1964 Olympics. "The days are gone," said Novelist Tsuneo Tomita, himself a topnotch judoist, "when judo provided Japanese with a source of childish self-satisfaction in the thought that a small guy can always beat a big fellow.''

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