Yamashita Yoshiaki - Introducing Judo To America

Introducing Judo To America

In February 1902, Seattle-based railroad executive Samuel Hill decided that his 9-year-old son, James Nathan, should learn judo, which he had apparently seen or heard about while on a business trip to Japan. In Hill's words, the idea was for the boy to learn "the ideals of the Samurai class, for that class of men is a noble, high-minded class. They look beyond the modern commercial spirit." Hill spoke to a Japanese American business associate, Masajiro Furuya, for advice. Furuya referred Hill to Kazuyoshi Shibata, who was a student at Yale University. Shibata told Hill about Yamashita, and on 21 July 1903, Hill wrote a letter to Yamashita, asking him to come to Seattle at Hill's expense. On 26 August 1903, Yamashita replied, writing that he, his wife, and one of his students (Saburo Kawaguchi) would leave for Seattle on 22 September 1903.

The ship carrying the Yamashita party docked in Seattle on 8 October 1903. A week later, on 17 October 1903, Yamashita and Kawaguchi gave a judo exhibition at a Seattle theater that Hill had rented for the evening. Attendance was by invitation only, and guests included Sam Hill's mother-in-law, Mary Hill (wife of railroader J.J. Hill), Senator Russell Alger, and assorted Sportswriters. Afterwards, Hill took the Yamashita party east to Washington, D.C., where Mrs. Hill and young James Nathan were then living. Meanwhile, the favorable publicity surrounding the event caused Japanese Americans living in Seattle to start their own judo club, known as the Seattle Dojo.

Soon after arriving in the District of Columbia, Yamashita visited the Japanese Legation, and in March 1904, the Japanese naval attaché, Commander Takeshita Isamu, took Yamashita to the White House to meet President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt practiced wrestling and boxing while in the White House, and he had received jujutsu jackets from William Sturgis Bigelow and jujutsu lessons from J. J. O'Brien, a Philadelphia police officer who had studied jujutsu while living in Nagasaki. Roosevelt was impressed with Yamashita's skill, and during March and April 1904, Yamashita gave judo lessons to the President and interested family and staff in a room at the White House. Subsequently, at other locations, Yamashita and his wife Fude gave lessons to prominent American women, to include Martha Blow Wadsworth (sister of Kindergarten pioneer Susan Blow), Hallie Elkins (wife of Senator Stephen Benton Elkins), and Grace Davis Lee (Hallie Elkins' sister), and their children.

In January 1905, Yamashita got a job teaching judo at the U.S. Naval Academy. There were about 25 students in his class, including a future admiral, Robert L. Ghormley. The position ended at the end of the school term, and Yamashita was not rehired for the following year. When President Roosevelt heard of this, he spoke to the Secretary of the Navy, who in turn told the Superintendent of the Naval Academy to rehire Yamashita. Consequently, Yamashita's judo was taught at the Naval Academy throughout the first six months of 1906.