Gentlemanly Jujitsu

At Paris' unheated Palais des Sports last week, the barefooted contestants, dressed in pajama like costumes, clambered carefully into the canvas-covered ring. At a signal from the referee, the contestants knelt on their haunches, Japanese style, heads bowed low. Then they hopped to their feet and came out fighting. Much of the fighting was a soundless, antic pantomime with the contestants warily circling each other, clutching pajama tops, watching the opponent's feet like two children taking their first steps on the dance floor.

After four minutes, the silence was broken by a bloodcurdling "Yeeeeooowwhh!" France's Guy Verrier, uttering the cry to 1) unnerve his opponent, and 2) give added power to his stomach muscles, caught his opponent with a hip hold, gave a mighty heave and hurled Austria's Robert Jaquemond to the mat. The toss earned France's Verrier, 24, a strapping 202-pounder, the individual title at the European Judo championships, and helped France win the team crown (over Austria, 2-0). The fall gave Austria's burly Jaquemond the only injury of the tournament: a sprained wrist.

"Muscle Culture." As last week's tournament showed, the sport of judo, founded in 1882 by a Japanese named Jigoro Kano, is nothing more than a gentlemanly version of jujitsu. Kano learned the ancient art at 18, but decided that the kicking, stabbing and choking were more than he could stomach. So he founded the "muscle culture" of judo, an "efficient use of energy" that eliminated the mayhem and murder of jujitsu. Since Kano's time, the judo cult has spread to all corners of the globe. The first judo club was formed in Britain in 1918, in France in 1938. After the war, judo boomed. France, center of the European cult, now has 150,000 judo wrestlers (called judoka) in 500 clubs, and the International Judo Federation now includes ten European nations.*

Judoka consider themselves head & shoulders above ordinary grunt & groaners. One haughty English contestant spoke up for all judoka last week: "Judo is a clean, honest sport, an art, physical poetry, not a childish theatrical exhibition."

"I Can't Look!" After the championships last week there was one theatrical exhibition that made even judoka shudder. As a finale to the tournament, Japan's little (5 ft. 6 in., 165 lbs.) Shozo Awazu, currently coaching in France, took on ten of the contestants one after another.

One ringside Frenchman, swigging cognac against the cold, covered his eyes as Awazu let loose the first of his shrieking "Yeeeeooowwhhs!" "God, I can't look," shuddered the ringsider. "Tell me if he eats them too." Awazu, a sixth-dan judoka,* did not go that far, but he tossed the ten contestants in just 15 minutes without even raising a sweat.

* The ten: France, Britain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany and Denmark. Next year the U.S., Canada, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina and Australia are expected to join. Last week Japan (with more than 1,000,000 judo athletes) joined the federation and Risei Kano, son of judo's founder, became the new president. *In judo hierarchy, contestants are graded by an intricate system. Novices wear white belts. Then, through about two years' training, the novice judoka progresses through yellow, orange, green, blue and brown belts. From brown to the coveted black takes another year. There are ten grades of black belt, starting with first dan (i.e., grade). Sixth dan is the highest competitive rank. Higher dans are reserved for judo masters. No European ranks higher than fifth dan, but there are three tenth-dan men in the world, all Japanese.

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