# Olympic Demonstration sport question, what was budo? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 18, 2010, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506 "2010-10-18T01:22:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![notsoheavyd3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/85e7bf/32.png) [@notsoheavyd3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notsoheavyd3)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/1 "2010-10-18T01:22:58Z")
So I was looking on wikipedia about [Olympic Demonstration sports](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonstration_sport) and saw it mentioned that the Tokyo Olympics(64) had a demo sport called budo. So I’m curious, what the hell was that? (I tried a quick google search but didn’t come up with anything besides the fact budo is a generic word for martial arts or something.) ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/2 "2010-10-18T01:38:34Z")
> [@notsoheavyd3](#): > > So I was looking on wikipedia about [Olympic Demonstration sports](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonstration_sport) and saw it mentioned that the Tokyo Olympics(64) had a demo sport called budo. So I’m curious, what the hell was that? (I tried a quick google search but didn’t come up with anything besides the fact budo is a generic word for martial arts or something.) Budo = Judo > **[Judo at the 1964 Summer Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo_at_the_1964_Summer_Olympics)** > > The judo competition at the 1964 Summer Olympics was the first time the sport was included in the Summer Olympic Games. As a result, decades of judo being officially banned as an "imperialist sport" in the Soviet Union ended shortly before the Games started, as Soviet authorities prioritized winning medals above all else. The medals were awarded in 4 classes, and competition was restricted to men only. The competition was held in the Nippon Budokan, which was built to host the competition. > A tot... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/3 "2010-10-18T02:39:07Z")
Huh, I would have thought that judo would already have been a standard Olympic sport. ---
**Author:** ![Apocalypso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Apocalypso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apocalypso)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/4 "2010-10-18T03:36:26Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Budo = Judo > > [Judo at the 1964 Summer Olympics - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo_at_the_1964_Summer_Olympics) I dunno. From the wiki page on [budō](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud%C5%8D): > [@](#): > > Correspondingly, modern martial arts created during or after the Meiji Restoration are called gendai budō (literally, “modern martial way”). Gendai budō such as “judo”, “kendo” and “iaido” came from koryū bujutsu such as “jujutsu”, “kenjutsu” and “iaijutsu” respectively Also: > [@](#): > > One view is that a bujutsu is the martial art you practice, whereas a budo is the lifestyle you live and the path you walk by practicing a bujutsu. For example, one could say that Judo and Jujutsu practiced as a practiced martial art are one and the same, being that the practice of the art Jujutsu leads to obtaining the lifestyle of Judo (Judo was originally known as Kano Jujutsu, after Judo’s founder Kano Jigoro). That would be true with arts such as kenjutsu/kendo and iaijutsu/iaido as well. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/5 "2010-10-18T04:04:01Z")
If you go to the Wikipedia page on the [1964 Summer Olympics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Summer_Olympics), you’ll see that judo is listed separately from budo. ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/6 "2010-10-18T06:58:45Z")
Judo was not a demonstration sport in the '64 Olympics, it was an official sport (for the first time): > [@](#): > > The first time judo was seen in the Olympics was at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles, where Kano and about 200 judo students gave a demonstration.[13] Judo became an Olympic sport for men in the 1964 Games in Tokyo. With the persistence of Rena Kanokogi, an American, and many others, judo became an Olympic sport for women as well in 1988. It is often stated that the men’s judo event in 1964 was a demonstration event, but according to the International Judo Federation (IJF) and International Olympic Committee, judo was in fact an official sport in the 1964 games > **[Judo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo)** > > Judo (Japanese: 柔道, Hepburn: Jūdō; lit. 'gentle way') is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, combat sport, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally. Judo was created in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō (嘉納 治五郎) as an eclectic martial art, distinguishing itself from its predecessors (primarily Tenjin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu and Kitō-ryū jujutsu) due to an emphasis on "randori" (乱取り, lit. 'free sparring') instead of kata (形, kata; pre-arranged The obje... According to my personal WAG, the Wikipedia entry the OP quotes is due to a misunderstanding. Budo (būdō) is a generic term for (japanese) martial arts like kendo, jujutsi (jiu-jitsu), aikido, judo, karate _et al._ You can’t have “budo” as a demonstration sport, it would be akin to have “ball games” or “watersports” as a demonstration sport. The distinction between “-do” and “-jutsu”/“-jutsi” is that the former translates (roughly) as _way_ (as in “the way”, lifestyle), while the latter translates (roughly) as _art_. Thus, “judo” is “the gentle way”, while “jujutsi” is “the gentle art (of self defense 😉 )” When Jigoro Kano created judo, he used jujutsi as the basis and thus took jujutsi from a set of techniques (an art) to a (life)style (the way). Just like **Apocalypso** said: > [@](#): > > Also: > > > [@](#): > > > > One view is that a bujutsu is the martial art you practice, whereas a budo is the lifestyle you live and the path you walk by practicing a bujutsu. For example, one could say that Judo and Jujutsu practiced as a practiced martial art are one and the same, being that the practice of the art Jujutsu leads to obtaining the lifestyle of Judo (Judo was originally known as Kano Jujutsu, after Judo’s founder Kano Jigoro). That would be true with arts such as kenjutsu/kendo and iaijutsu/iaido as well. ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/olympic-demonstration-sport-question-what-was-budo/557506/7 "2010-10-18T07:07:29Z")
Addendum: When creating judo, Kano also took out jujutsi techniques which had an unacceptable risk of injury to the opponent, typically wrist bends, neck bends and _atemi_ (pressing and/or striking at especially vulnerable points of your opponent’s body, effective in self defense but of course unacceptable in a competition sport). Elbow bends and strangleholds (which are permitted in judo) do not create an unacceptable injury risk, the former because the margin between intolerable pain and serious injury is very large, the latter because you are required to release your stranglehold the second your opponent loses consciousness, and a person has to be strangled for quite a while after being rendered unconscious in order to die or suffer brain damage.