06 │ The Formation of Budō — Judo, Kendo, and the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai

🥋Article 6 │ The Formation of Budō — Judo, Kendo, and the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai
The idea of budō (武道, “the martial way”) is often presented as a Japanese tradition reaching back many centuries. Seen historically, however, what we now call budō is a modern construct, assembled from the late Meiji through the early Shōwa period. This article traces Kanō Jigorō’s creation of judo, the modernization of kendo, and the role of the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai that bound them together — the very apparatus through which Okinawan tūdī would be received on the mainland as karate-dō.

🧭Orientation for readers new to Japanese history

• Era names. Japanese dates are often given by imperial era. The ones that matter here are Meiji (1868–1912), Taishō (1912–1926), and the early Shōwa (from 1926) period. We always pair them with the Western year.
• Two families of words: -jutsu and -dō. Older names for the martial arts end in -jutsu (術, “technique/art”): kenjutsu (swordsmanship), jūjutsu (unarmed grappling), kyūjutsu (archery). The modern names end in -dō (道, “way”): kendō, jūdō, kyūdō. The change from -jutsu to -dō is not cosmetic; it marks a reframing of a fighting skill as a path of self-cultivation.
• Bugei / bujutsu vs. budō. Bugei (武芸) and bujutsu (武術), “martial arts/techniques,” are the older umbrella terms for the warrior’s skills under samurai rule. Budō (武道), “the martial way,” is the modern umbrella term created when those skills were rebuilt as instruments of education, character-training, and sport. A central argument of this article is that budō, in this unified modern sense, is barely a century old.
• The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (大日本武徳会, “Greater Japan Martial Virtue Society”). A semi-governmental organization founded in 1895 that standardized, certified, and promoted the modern martial arts nationwide. It is the institutional hinge of this whole story. </aside>

From “Martial Arts” (Bugei) to “the Martial Way” (Budō)

Until the end of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867), disciplines such as swordsmanship (kenjutsu), grappling (jūjutsu), archery (kyūjutsu), spearmanship (sōjutsu), and gunnery were known collectively as bugei (武芸) or bujutsu (武術). They were the professional accomplishments of the samurai, transmitted as the secret teachings (hiden) of individual schools (ryūha).

When the Meiji Restoration (1868) abolished samurai status and the public wearing of swords was later banned (the Haitōrei, sword-abolition decree, of 1876), these arts lost their occupational footing. From the 1870s into the early 1880s many training halls (dōjō) closed, and swordsmanship and jūjutsu entered a period of decline. The Metropolitan Police adopted swordsmanship in 1879; and around 1873, “fencing-as-spectacle” performances (gekiken kōgyō) — begun by Sakakibara Kenkichi (榊原鍵吉) — were drawing crowds in Tokyo. For a time the martial arts sank almost to the level of circus entertainment.

What reversed this decline was the movement toward “budō-ization” that ran from the late Meiji into the Taishō period. To turn a traditional martial art into budō was to connect it to the frameworks of modern education, the state, and sport. This was not a mere change of name but a fundamental reconstruction of aim, organization, and method of practice.

📝A word on the vocabulary. English has only “martial arts” to cover everything, but Japanese distinguishes carefully. Bugei and bujutsu point to the skill itself, as a craft handed down within a school. Budō adds a claim about purpose — that the practice forms character and serves society. When a Western book calls karate “a Japanese martial art,” it quietly blurs this distinction, and with it the historical fact that the “-dō, way” framing was added quite late.

Kanō Jigorō and Kōdōkan Judo

Kanō Jigorō (嘉納治五郎, Kanō Jigorō, 1860–1938) was the single greatest architect of the martial arts’ modernization. A graduate of Tokyo University and an elite educator versed in English, pedagogy, and philosophy, he served for many years as principal of the Tokyo Higher Normal School and became the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) (1909).

In 1882 (Meiji 15), Kanō opened the Kōdōkan (講道館) at the temple Eishō-ji in Shitaya, Tokyo. Having studied the Tenjin Shin’yō-ryū and Kitō-ryū schools of jūjutsu, he synthesized them into jūdō (柔道, judo). The shift from -jutsu (technique) to -dō (way) was deliberate and symbolic.

Kanō’s judo was groundbreaking in several respects:

1. Theorization. He framed judo around two principles — seiryoku zen’yō (精力善用, “maximum efficient use of energy”) and jita kyōei (自他共栄, “mutual welfare and benefit”) — tying technique to ethical and educational value.
2. Emphasis on randori (free sparring). By removing the most dangerous techniques, he built a rule system in which students could spar freely and safely.
3. The dan–kyū ranking system. He introduced graded ranks (shodan, nidan, and so on) in 1883. This grading scheme would later spread to martial arts and sports across the world.
4. A standardized uniform. The white judo uniform (a thick jacket and a belt) became the model for the later karate uniform, the taekwondo uniform, and the Brazilian jiu-jitsu gi.
5. Diffusion through schooling. Through the Tokyo Higher Normal School, which he headed, Kanō spread judo into school physical education nationwide.

Kōdōkan judo rapidly absorbed rival schools and came to dominate within the police, the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai, and the school system. Judo was the first successful fusion of the form of modern sport with the content of the Japanese martial arts.

📝Ranks first, colored belts a little later. The dan–kyū ranking dates to 1883, but the now-iconic black and white belts worn to show rank came a few years afterward (around 1886), and the familiar heavy white judogi was standardized only in the early twentieth century (c. 1907). So the visual image most people associate with “the black belt” is slightly younger than the ranking idea itself — a small but telling example of how piece-by-piece the modern budō look was assembled.

The Modernization of Kendo

Kendō (剣道) is likewise the result of consolidating and modernizing the many swordsmanship schools of the Tokugawa era.

• Standardization. The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (founded 1895) standardized kendo’s bamboo sword (shinai), protective armor, valid target areas, and match rules.
• Merging the schools. Schools such as the Hokushin Ittō-ryū, Shintō Munen-ryū, and Ittō-ryū, formerly separate, could now meet under a common competitive format.
• Entry into schools. The 1913 (Taishō 2) Course of Study for School Gymnastics adopted “fencing and jūjutsu” (gekiken oyobi jūjutsu) as an elective for middle-school boys. The official school-curriculum names were changed to “kendō and jūdō” only in the revised Course of Study of 1926 (Taishō 15).

The name “kendō” was officially unified within the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai in 1919, when “kenjutsu” was renamed “kendō.” Before that, terms such as gekiken, kenjutsu, and kendō coexisted.

📝On the 1919 date. 1919 is the standard date for the official renaming (led by the Butoku Kai’s vice-president, Nishikubo Hiromichi). In practice, however, internal Butoku Kai documents show that “kendō” and “jūdō” were already in use by around 1914. The 1919 reform formalized a shift that was already underway, rather than inventing the names from nothing.

The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai

The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (大日本武徳会, Dai Nippon Butokukai) was the organizational core of the martial arts’ modernization.

• Founded in 1895 (Meiji 28) in Kyoto, in the afterglow of victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, with the stated aim of promoting “martial virtue” (butoku).
• Built the Butokuden (武徳殿) hall on land adjoining the Heian Shrine (it still stands, designated an Important Cultural Property).
• Maintained branches nationwide and oversaw the system of titles and ranks for kendo, judo, archery, and other arts.
• Imperial-family members, military officers, and politicians sat on its board, giving it a semi-governmental standing.
• It hosted tournaments and great public demonstrations, and established a system of awards and titles for martial artists (the seirensho certificate; the titles hanshi and kyōshi, and later renshi).

Decisive for the history of karate: in 1933 (Shōwa 8) the Butoku Kai opened the way to treating tūdī / karate as a budō discipline, and by the late 1930s karateka too were being awarded titles such as kyōshi and renshi. Through this, tūdī / karate was folded into the same institutional framework as judo and kendo.

📝The title system (shōgō).
The Butoku Kai’s three ranked titles, from highest to lowest, were hanshi (範士, “exemplary teacher”), kyōshi (教士, “teaching expert”), and renshi (錬士, “polished/trained expert”). These are titles of mastery and teaching standing, separate from the numbered dan grades, and they survive today in the certifications issued by bodies such as the All Japan Kendo Federation. That karateka began receiving them in the 1930s is concrete evidence of karate’s admission into the official world of budō.

The Components of the Modern “Budō” Concept

The modern concept of budō is built from the following elements:

1. A dan–kyū ranking system and titles — begun in Kōdōkan judo and extended to the other arts by the Butoku Kai.
2. A white uniform and belt — originating in judo and spreading to karate, kendo (the hakama and practice top), aikido, and others.
3. Dōjō etiquette — “begin with a bow, end with a bow,” bowing to the kamiza or to the front of the hall, the seated bow (za-rei).
4. Framing as a “way” (-dō) — not mere technique, but a means of forming character and disciplining the spirit.
5. Ties to the state and the emperor — the Imperial Rescript on Education, demonstrations before the emperor (tenran-jiai, gozen-enbu).
6. Competition and sportiness — contests under standardized rules.

Most of these were deliberately designed between the late Meiji and the early Shōwa periods. The claim that “budō is a centuries-old Japanese tradition” is the result of projecting a modern invention onto the distant past (Bennett 2015). This is also a theme in Part IV §1 (the history of kata) of the “What Is Karate?” — A Multidimensional Inquiry Through Thought, History, and Sociology (English Edition) series.

📝“Invented tradition.” Historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger coined this phrase (The Invention of Tradition, 1983) for customs that feel ancient but were in fact created quite recently, often to serve a modern nation-state. Budō — with its rituals, ranks, uniforms, and appeals to the “spirit of the samurai” — is a near-perfect case. Saying so does not cheapen it; it simply locates it accurately, as a modern cultural creation rather than an unbroken medieval inheritance.

Tūdī’s Transplantation to the Mainland and Its “Budō-ization”

The process by which karate was carried to mainland Japan was, step by step, a process of adopting these very components of budō:

• 1922 (Taishō 11). Funakoshi Gichin (船越義珍, Funakoshi Gichin) demonstrated tūdī at a physical-education exhibition sponsored by the Ministry of Education — the event that triggered its spread on the mainland.
• 1924 onward. A tūdī study group was founded at Keio University; the following year (1925), one was founded at Tokyo Imperial University; clubs then followed in quick succession at major universities such as Meiji, Waseda, Takushoku, and Hōsei. (This connects to the university-club culture discussed in Article 7.)
• 1929. The Keio University tūdī study group changed the written form from 唐手 (tūdī, “Chinese hand”) to 空手 (karate, “empty hand”) and adopted the name karate-dō. The move drained the “Chinese” connotation of 唐 (“Tang”) and gave the art the Zen-inflected, Japanese sense of 空 (kū/kara, “emptiness”).
• 1930s. The white karate uniform, the dan–kyū system, the black belt, and dōjō etiquette were adopted in imitation of judo.
• 1933 onward. Tūdī / karate was treated as a budō discipline within the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai.
• 1936. Leading Okinawan masters met in Naha and formally resolved to change 唐手 to 空手.
• 1937. Miyagi Chōjun (宮城長順, founder of Gōjū-ryū) and Konishi Yasuhiro (小西康裕) received the kyōshi title, and karateka were progressively absorbed into the Butoku Kai’s title system.

Here the “ti” (hand) of the Okinawan gentry was completely redefined as a member of modern Japanese budō. The transition from tūdī to karate-dō was not a mere change of name but a wholesale incorporation into the budō format.

Budō in Wartime, and Its Postwar Dissolution and Revival

During the Pacific War, budō was folded into the machinery of total mobilization. From 1941, budō was made compulsory in the national schools (kokumin gakkō), and kendo and judo were treated as means of cultivating the “national spirit.”

After the defeat, the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ) regarded budō as bound up with militarism and banned it from school classes and clubs. The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai was dissolved in 1946.

Yet budō was not extinguished. In the 1950s it revived as sport: the All Japan Judo Federation was founded in 1949 and the All Japan Kendo Federation in 1952; judo became an official event at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and karate at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021).

A Note for Western Readers

In Western books on karate, budō is often glossed as “the ancient Japanese way of the warrior.” This is half-misleading.

• The martial arts themselves (bugei / bujutsu) did exist from medieval times.
• But the unified concept of budō is a modern construct of the late Meiji through Shōwa periods.
• The dan–kyū ranks, the white uniform, the etiquette of the bow, and the sport-style competitive format are all modern inventions.

None of this diminishes the value of budō. On the contrary, it shows budō to be a cultural phenomenon deliberately designed as the national culture of modern Japan and then spread to the world. Karate, too, came in this current of “budō-ization” to possess a double origin — Okinawan tradition and Japanese modernity.

Notes on Terminology

• Bugei (武芸) / bujutsu (武術). The premodern umbrella terms for the warrior’s martial skills, transmitted within individual schools.
• Budō (武道). The modern umbrella term — “the martial way” — created when those skills were rebuilt as instruments of education and character-formation.
• -jutsu vs. -dō. The suffix -jutsu (“technique”) names the older arts (kenjutsu, jūjutsu); -dō (“way”) names their modern, character-forming reframings (kendō, jūdō).
• Jūdō (柔道) / Kōdōkan (講道館). The art synthesized by Kanō Jigorō in 1882, and the school (literally “hall for expounding the way”) he founded to teach it.
• Randori (乱取り). Free, full-speed sparring, as opposed to prearranged forms (kata).
• Seiryoku zen’yō / jita kyōei. Kanō’s twin principles: “maximum efficient use of energy” and “mutual welfare and benefit.”
• Dan–kyū system (段級位制). The graded ranking scheme (lower kyū grades rising to higher dan grades) introduced in judo in 1883.
• Gekiken kōgyō (撃剣興行). “Fencing-as-spectacle”: paid public sword-fighting shows of the early Meiji period that kept swordsmanship alive as entertainment.
• Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (大日本武徳会). The semi-governmental martial-arts society (founded 1895, Kyoto) that standardized and certified budō nationwide; dissolved by GHQ in 1946.
• Butokuden (武徳殿). The Butoku Kai’s ceremonial hall in Kyoto, beside the Heian Shrine; still standing as an Important Cultural Property.
• Hanshi / kyōshi / renshi (範士・教士・錬士). The Butoku Kai’s titles of mastery and teaching rank (highest to lowest), distinct from the numbered dan grades.
• Tūdī (唐手) → karate (空手). The written form 唐手 (“Chinese hand”) was reread and rewritten as 空手 (“empty hand”) on the mainland in 1929 and formally in Okinawa in 1936; with the suffix -dō it became karate-dō.

Coming Next

Article 7 turns to educational administration in modern Japan, from the Meiji period to the defeat. It surveys school physical education, moral (shūshin) education, the martial-arts curriculum at institutions such as the Gakushūin, and the history of extracurricular (club) activities — and asks how karate came to be built into this educational apparatus.

Bibliography

• Irie Kōhei, Budō bunka no tankyū [An Inquiry into the Culture of Budō], Fumaidō Shuppan, 2003.
• Nakajima Tetsuya, Kindai budō no keifu [A Genealogy of Modern Budō], Miyabi Shuppan, 2017.
• Nagaki Kōsuke, Kanō jūdō shisō no keishō to hen’yō [The Inheritance and Transformation of Kanō’s Judo Thought], Kazama Shobō, 2008.
• Sakaue Yasuhiro, Nippon yakyū no keifugaku [A Genealogy of Japanese Baseball], Seikyūsha, 2001 (cited here by way of contrast with budō).
• Kanō Jigorō, Watashi no shōgai to jūdō [My Life and Judo], Nihon Tosho Center, reprint ed.
• Abe Satoshi, “Dai Nippon Butoku Kai no kenkyū” [A Study of the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai] (article), 2010.
• Bennett, Alexander. Kendo: Culture of the Sword. University of California Press, 2015.
• Donohue, John J. Warrior Dreams: The Martial Arts and the American Imagination. Bergin & Garvey, 1994.
• Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Krug, Gary J. “The Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate into Anglo-American Culture.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, 2001.