Theodore Roosevelt on Judo

Theodore Roosevelt served as the twenty-sixth President of the United States from 1901 to 1909.  TR is famous for the “Strenuous Life”.  He practiced boxing and wrestling through his twenties and thirties.  What is not as widely known is that he practiced Judo around 1904, when he was in his mid-40s.

Roosevelt would eventually earn a brown belt in Judo.  Yoshiaki Yamashita, who would also teach at the Naval Academy, taught Roosevelt during his travels through the United States.  TR wrote about his Judo experience in letters to his sons, Theodore, Jr. and Kermit.

Theodore wrote to Kermit from the White House on March 5, 1904.   Dear Kermit: I am wrestling with two Japanese Wrestlers three times a week.  I am not the age or the build one would think to be whirled lightly over an opponent’s head and batted down on a mattress without damage.  But they are so skillful that I have not been hurt at all.  My throat is a little soar, because once when one of them had a strangle hold I also got hold of his windpipe and thought I could perhaps choke him off before he could choke me.  However, he got ahead.

When he wrote Ted (Theodore, Jr.) on April 9, 1904, he seems to have been a little worse for wear.   Dear Ted: I am very glad to have been doing this Japanese wrestling, but when I am through with it this time I am not at all sure I shall ever try it again while I am so busy with other work as I am now.  Often by the time I get to five o’clock in the afternoon I will be feeling like a stewed owl, after an eight hours’ grapple with Senators, congressmen, etc: then I find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest.  My right ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am well mottled with bruises elsewhere.  Still I have made good progress, and since you left they have taught me three new throws that are perfect corkers.   

In a letter to Kermit on February 24, 1905, he compared American wrestling (catch as catch can) and Japanese wrestling (Judo):  I still box with Grant, who has now become the champion middleweight wrestler of the United States.  Yesterday afternoon we had Professor Yamashita up here to wrestle with Grant.  It was a very interesting, but of course jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far apart that it is difficult to make any comparison between them.  Wrestling is simply a sport with rules almost as conventional as those of tennis, while jiu jitsu is really meant for practice in killing or disabling our adversary.  In consequences, Grant did not know what to do except to put Yamashita on his back, and Yamashita was perfectly content to be on his back.  Inside of a minute Yamashita had choked Grant, and inside of two minutes more he got an elbow hold on him that would have enabled him to break his arm; so that there is no question but that he could have put Grant out.  So far this made it evident that the jiu jitsu man could handle the ordinary wrestler.

Roosevelt went on to say Grant wore Yamashita out due to his superior strength and conditioning.  TR felt a wrestler who learned jiu jitsu (Judo) could dominate them due to superior conditioning.  It is interesting that Yamashita, a Kodokan representative, called what he was doing jiu jitsu.  Kosei Madea, a Kodokan representative who taught the Gracies  in Brazil, also called it jiu jitsu.

The material from TR’s letters is from Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children, published in 1919 and now in the public domain.

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