Kano Jigoro attending the IOC Session in Cairo.
After the war, Japan once again launched a bid to host the Olympics in Tokyo. American Avery Brundage became IOC President from 1952. He had a close friendship with Kano and had also been a supporter of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics right up until the end.
Brundage continued to lend strong support for Japan's bid to bring the Olympics to Tokyo after the war, and the decision to stage the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo was finally taken at the IOC Session in Munich in 1959. Two years later, it was decided to introduce judo at the Tokyo Olympics. The International Judo Federation and the European Judo Federation worked tirelessly to make judo an Olympic event. There is no doubt that the network of people developed by Kano during his 29 years as an IOC member made a major contribution to realizing the Tokyo Olympiad of 1964 and having judo recognized as an Olympic sport. Having said that, rather than just making judo an Olympic discipline, it was Kano Jigoro's aim to incorporate the spirit of martial arts into the Olympic Movement.
Kano Jigoro on his way to North America following the IOC Session in Cairo.
The spirit of martial arts as envisaged by Kano was demonstrated at the 1964 Olympics by Anton Geesink of the Netherlands in the judo open-weight division. At the moment his victory was decided, Geesink waved away delighted countrymen as they attempted to come onto the mat, thereby demonstrating the emphasis on courtesy in martial arts. The Japanese audience was glad to see that the spirit of martial arts was common to judoka of all nationalities. However, with the subsequent internationalization of judo, the sport rapidly became Westernized. As a tide of professionalism attempts to engulf judo with the introduction of ranking systems and so on, the issue now is how to retain the spirit of martial arts.
In striving to bring the 1940 Olympic Games to Tokyo, Kano Jigoro worked to make the Olympic Movement into a part of global culture. As an educator and as a judoka, he stressed that the true ideal of the Olympic Movement was a fusion of the Olympic Spirit with the spirit of martial arts. Perhaps this amalgamation of Olympism and the spirit of martial arts as envisaged by Kano has yet to be fully realized.
Pierre de Coubertin touched on the 1940 Tokyo Olympics in one of his final personal writings. He wrote about the importance of combining Hellenism, which underpinned European culture, with the sophisticated culture and arts of Asia through the staging of the Games in Tokyo. De Coubertin stressed that the Olympic ideal had to evolve with the times and may have sought a beginning for this in Japanese culture. Japan has historically valued the concept of "wa" or "harmony," which seeks to create new culture by accepting foreign cultures. Bearing this background in mind, in order to make the Olympics a common element of global culture in a multicultural age, it could be Japan's mission to demonstrate a new ideal for the Olympic Movement through harmonizing Olympism with Japanese culture at a future Tokyo Olympics.
Boarding the Hikawa Maru out of Vancouver on his way back to Japan, after a courtesy call to the American IOC member who supported the Tokyo bid, following the IOC meeting in Cairo. (Kano fell sick immediately after departure.)
