Judo came into existence as forms of unarmed combat, which were grouped under the general name of "Jujitsu" which transelates to "the gentle practice or the gentle art." The object of all these martial arts forms was to avoid an enemy's strength through leverage, speed, and technique. Medieval Japanese warriors practiced many different combat skills. Since Jujitsu was strictly a combat technique, contests were rare and were decided only by the death or crippling of one of the contestants.

When Japanese society began to change structurally in the 1860's, feudal lords no longer retained their private armies; the martial arts, including Jujitsu, began to die out. It was until 1882 that Dr. Jigoro Kano PhD, a professor from Tokyo University and an expert in many types of Jujitsu, decided to save some of these ancient arts and use them not as combat techniques, but to better society worldwide. He modified or eliminated the most dangerous of the Jujitsu techniques so that they could be practiced regularly without serious injury to the participants and created a new discipline, which he called "Judo" or "the gentle way."

Judo is "the gentle way" because the end result is maximum efficiency with minimum effort. As a sport and a way of life, rather than simply a combat form. Judo includes a code of honor and sportsmanship, a sense of mutual respect, and a system of ethical and moral development. Judo is both an art and a science. As an art, Judo enables its practitioners to gain self-respect, self-confidence, self-restraint, and self-expression; as a science, it involves a mastery of such basic natural laws as gravity, friction, momentum, weight transmission, and unity of forces.

From its humble beginnings in nineteenth-century Japan, Judo has spread in popularity throughout the world. Presently, Judo is the second most practiced sport in the world, next to Soccer. It was introduced as an Olympic Sport in 1964. Its rich, medieval heritage combined with Professor Kano's modern, scientific and moral approach has made Judo into the exciting and popular sport that it is today.