Should it be compulsory?

[oneya]

JAPAN does not have enough qualified martial arts instructors?

The actual number of deaths of 108 between 1983 and 2009 would tend to bear that out surely.

oneya

[T. Kimura]

JAPAN does not have enough qualified martial arts instructors?

The actual number of deaths of 108 between 1983 and 2009 would tend to bear that out surely.

oneya

Somehow that does not surprise me especially in relation to Judo. Even in a 26 year period that figure seems high. I wonder what the figures are for high school football in the USA?

[Greg]

Somehow that does not surprise me especially in relation to Judo. Even in a 26 year period that figure seems high. I wonder what the figures are for high school football in the USA?

Between 1990 and 2010, there were 69 deaths as a "direct" result of football (i.e. impact injuries mostly to the head, some to the chest) in American high school football; this does not include heat stroke, suicide, and other "indirect" causes of death. That's about 3.5 per year. Bear in mind that the U.S. has a population roughly 2.5 times larger than Japan's. (See Table 1 on pages 18-20: http://www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi/2010FBAnnual.pdf)

I have no love for American football, which I see as an exercise is "socially acceptable" violence under the guise of "sport." Of course, violence is a part of many sports, but there's something particularly galling about the big-guy-crushes-smaller-guy mentality inherent in American football.

But back to Judo, which can be perceived as a "sporting" derivation of jujitsu or a "trimmed down" version of jujitsu. In either case, we're talking about deadly budo techniques developed for warfare and self-preservation. This many kids dying is simply an enormous corruption of the self-preservation/protection ethos of budo, and this is the problem with all "sportifications" of martial arts. I keep thinking about what it would be like if (knock on wood) a student in my dojo died in training or a shiai match. I guess it's possible; anything is. But what if someone is the kind of "martial arts teacher" who was really a gymnast and had taken a few courses in Judo that "qualified" them to teach judo (or karate or jujitsu) to kids? The public would have every right to crucify them and whatever idiot(s) allowed them to teach.

The irony, of course, is that here in the U.S. (not sure about Japan) people can open their own martial arts schools and teach whatever the heck they want with absolutely no training or qualifications whatsoever! I'm not eager for government-imposed regulation, but the only alternative is the free-market mentality, in which masters of bullshido compete with practitioners of bushido for an initially ignorant student-base. If one could trust in the "wisdom of the masses" to differentiate between the two, that would be great. But there's an oxymoron for you: "wisdom of the masses," indeed!

Not sure why this has gotten under my skin so much.

Best,
Greg

[T. Kimura]

There were about 30 deaths from heatstroke in HS Football in the last 12 or so years. With 69 direct injury deaths in roughly two decades, adjusted for time, the figures for football and judo should be similar. Of course, neither statistic includes catastrophic injury that did not result in death.