Unit 10 · Who May Stand on the Mat

On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed the Education Amendments of 1972. One short part of that law is called Title IX. It says no person may be shut out of a school program because of sex. The rule covers any school or college that takes federal money.

Title IX did not name sports at all. Its authors were thinking about admissions, jobs and classes. Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii was one of its main authors. After her death in 2002, Congress renamed the law the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.

Schools soon learned that sports counted as an education program. Girls’ teams, budgets and coaches began to grow in high schools and colleges. The law became the main tool for equal opportunity in American school sport.

Title IX needed detailed rules to be enforced. The federal government issued them in 1975. One rule said a school could run separate teams for boys and girls. It also named certain sports as contact sports.

The list of contact sports included boxing, wrestling, rugby, ice hockey, football and basketball. In a contact sport, a school did not have to let a girl try out for the boys’ team. It also did not have to start a girls’ team if few girls asked for one.

This exception shaped combat sports for decades. Many schools added girls’ basketball, which was on the list, because many girls wanted to play. Girls’ wrestling grew far later. For years, a girl who wanted to wrestle often had to ask to join the boys’ team.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, some American girls wrestled on boys’ high school teams. They trained and competed under the boys’ weight classes. A few won matches at state tournaments. Their results showed coaches that girls wanted the sport.

Some states then created separate girls’ championships. Illinois held its first IHSA girls’ state finals in the 2021–22 season. Colleges moved too. Several small colleges started women’s wrestling teams in the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2020 the NCAA named women’s wrestling an emerging sport. That label means the NCAA helps colleges add a women’s sport that is still growing. It moves a sport toward an official NCAA championship. Girls’ and women’s wrestling is now one of the fastest growing school sports.

Rena Glickman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and began judo in the 1950s. People called her Rusty. In 1959 she entered a YMCA judo tournament in upstate New York. She wore her hair short, and her team entered her in the men’s contest.

Her team won. Then officials learned she was a woman and asked for her medal back. They said the rules did not allow women in the contest. She gave it back, but she did not leave judo. She later trained at the Kodokan in Tokyo and married Ryohei Kanokogi, a judo teacher.

The YMCA’s choice shows how a tournament rule could close a sport without saying women could not train. Women were welcome in some judo clubs. What they lacked were official contests and titles. In 2008 the YMCA gave Kanokogi a new medal, almost fifty years later.

By the 1970s women’s judo contests were growing in Europe, Japan and the Americas. Yet there was no women’s world championship. Men’s world judo championships had been held since 1956. Kanokogi decided to organize a women’s one herself.

She raised money, found sponsors and even took out a loan on her home. In November 1980 the first women’s world judo championships were held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Athletes came from many countries. Official medals now existed for women at the world level.

Kanokogi then pressed the International Judo Federation and the International Olympic Committee to add women. Women’s judo appeared as a demonstration event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. It became a full medal sport four years later.

A dan is a black-belt rank in judo. Higher numbers mark longer service and greater standing. For decades, women at the Kodokan did not rise above fifth dan. Men with similar years of teaching could go higher.

Keiko Fukuda moved to the United States and taught women’s judo in San Francisco from the 1960s. Students and supporters argued that the rank limit was unfair. In 1972 the Kodokan promoted Fukuda to sixth dan. She was the first woman to pass the old limit.

In 2006 the Kodokan made her a ninth dan, the first woman to reach it there. In 2011 USA Judo awarded her tenth dan, its highest rank. She died in 2013. A rank ceiling is a quiet kind of exclusion, because it lets people in but stops how far they rise.

At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, women’s judo held seven medal events. The men also had seven. Each event is one weight class with its own gold, silver and bronze medals. Women’s judo entered the Games at full size, not as a single trial event.

That choice was not true of every combat sport. Women’s wrestling began in 2004 with four classes, while men had more. Women’s boxing began in 2012 with only three, against ten for men. The number of classes decides how many women can win medals.

The Olympic program is the list of sports and events at one Games. The International Olympic Committee approves it after hearing from each federation. Adding a women’s event often meant cutting or reshaping a men’s event, because the total number of athletes is capped.

Taekwondo became a full Olympic medal sport at the Sydney Games in 2000. Unlike judo and wrestling, it had women’s events from its first medal year. There were four weight classes for women and four for men.

The world body, now called World Taekwondo, had held women’s world championships since 1987. So by 2000 there was already a pool of women with international records. The first women’s Olympic taekwondo gold medal went to Lauren Burns of Australia, in the lightest class.

Olympic taekwondo has fewer classes than its world championships. Each Olympic class covers a wider weight range. That squeeze lets the sport fit inside the Olympic cap while keeping men’s and women’s events equal in number.

Wrestling was part of the first modern Olympics in 1896. For more than a hundred years, only men wrestled there. Women’s wrestling clubs grew in France, Norway, Japan and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s.

The world wrestling body held its first women’s world championships in 1987, in Norway. The women wrestled freestyle, one of the two Olympic styles. Japan, China, the United States and Canada soon built strong women’s programs.

Women’s freestyle wrestling joined the Olympics at Athens in 2004 with four classes. In 2016 the program changed to six classes for women and six for each men’s style. The gap between a first world title and a first Olympic medal was seventeen years.

The dohyō is the raised clay ring of sumo. The Japan Sumo Association, which runs professional sumo, does not let women step onto it. The association links the rule to tradition and to the ring’s role in Shinto ceremonies. Critics in Japan call it sex discrimination.

On April 4, 2018, the mayor of Maizuru collapsed while giving a speech on a dohyō during a touring event. Several women from the crowd, including a nurse, climbed up to give him first aid. A referee announced over the speakers that women should leave the ring.

The association’s chairman apologized and said life-saving care came first. Earlier, Osaka’s governor, Fusae Ohta, had asked in 2000 to present a trophy on the ring herself and was refused. Meanwhile, amateur women’s sumo holds its own contests and world championships.

Modern fencing uses three weapons: foil, épée and sabre. Each has its own rules about where a touch counts. Men fenced all three at the Olympics from the early 1900s. Women’s fencing began with foil at the Paris Games of 1924.

For seventy years, foil was the only weapon women fenced at the Olympics. Many officials of the time judged it the proper weapon for women. Women’s épée joined at Atlanta in 1996. Women’s sabre joined at Athens in 2004.

Fencing shows that a sport can admit women early and still limit them. The first door opened in 1924. The last one opened eighty years later. Today women fence all three weapons, in both individual and team events.

In 1895 Japan won a war against Qing China. That same year, leaders in Kyoto founded the Dai Nippon Butokukai, the Greater Japan Martial Virtue Society. Its founding matched the 1,100th anniversary of Kyoto becoming the capital. Members of the imperial family served as its honorary heads.

In 1899 the society opened the Butokuden, a large practice hall beside the Heian Shrine in Kyoto. It held yearly national demonstrations of kendo, judo, archery and other arts. Teachers came from every part of the country. The building still stands and is still used for martial arts.

The Butokukai gave teaching titles to senior teachers and ran a school that trained instructors. Its branches spread to every prefecture and to Japan’s colonies. By joining many old schools under one roof, it made the martial arts look like a single national tradition.

Japan’s public school system copied European models in the 1870s. Physical education meant marching and gymnastics. Supporters of kendo and judo, including Kanō Jigorō, argued for years that these arts should be taught in schools too.

In 1911 the Ministry of Education allowed middle schools to teach gekiken, the older word for kendo, and jujutsu as part of physical education. It was a choice, not a rule. Schools needed trained teachers, and the Butokukai’s school helped supply them.

In 1931 the ministry made kendo or judo compulsory for boys in middle schools. That same year, Japan’s army seized Manchuria in northeast China. Schools now described budo as training in loyalty and spirit, not only fitness. The gym had become part of the nation’s plans.

Official language changed in the 1910s and 1920s. The Butokukai began using budo, meaning martial ways, in place of bujutsu, meaning martial techniques. Gekiken became kendo. The new words stressed character and the path of a life.

After the war with China widened in 1937, schools gave more hours to budo. In 1942 the government reorganized the Butokukai as an official body. Several ministries, including the army and navy ministries, now helped run it. Schools taught budo as part of training students for war.

Many teachers and students experienced that time differently. Some saw the arts as sport and character building. Others served in the war. Historians use the wartime records to study how a state can shape a practice for its own goals, a process called mobilization.

Japan surrendered in August 1945. The Allied occupation, led by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, set out to remove militarism from Japanese life. Militarism is the belief that a nation should be ruled by military goals and values.

In late 1945 the Ministry of Education, following occupation orders, stopped budo classes in schools. Occupation officials saw kendo in particular as training for war. In 1946 the Butokukai was dissolved, and many of its leaders were barred from public posts.

Clubs did not vanish overnight. The Kodokan stayed open in Tokyo, and people kept practicing judo privately. Kendo teachers invented a version called shinai kyōgi, played in lighter gear with sport-style scoring. It was meant to show kendo as a sport rather than war training.

The All Japan Judo Federation was founded in 1949. It organized judo as a sport with open contests and published rules. In 1950 judo was allowed back into Japanese schools. Officials described it now as physical education and sport.

Kendo took longer because of its link to the sword. The All Japan Kendo Federation was founded in 1952, the year the occupation ended. Kendo then returned to school physical education. Its new rules stressed safety, fair scoring and sportsmanship.

The word federation matters here. A federation is a group of clubs and regions that agree on rules and hold championships. Budo moved from a state-run society to member federations like those in other sports. That change helped judo enter the Olympics in 1964.

In 2008 Japan’s Ministry of Education revised its national course of study. The new plan made budo a required part of physical education in the first two years of junior high school. It took full effect in April 2012. Dance became required at the same time.

Schools could choose among judo, kendo and sumo, and some offered other arts. Most chose judo or kendo. The ministry described the goal as learning about Japan’s traditional culture and showing respect to others.

Parents and doctors raised concerns about judo injuries among beginners. The ministry and judo bodies responded with safety guidelines and teacher training. This return shows a state using budo again, now described as culture and health rather than war.

Sambo is a Russian short form for self-defense without weapons. It grew in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. One of its founders, Vasili Oshchepkov, had studied judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo and earned a black belt there. Another, Viktor Spiridonov, trained police and soldiers.

The Soviet state wanted fit, ready citizens. In 1931 it began a national fitness program called GTO, short for Ready for Labor and Defense. Wrestling styles from many Soviet peoples, such as Georgia and Central Asia, fed into the new sport. So did judo.

In 1938 the All-Union Committee for Physical Culture and Sports recognized sambo as an official sport. The year before, Oshchepkov had been arrested during Stalin’s purges, and he died in prison. His story shows that a state could promote an art and still destroy one of its builders.

In April 1917 the Chinese magazine New Youth printed an essay called A Study of Physical Education. Its author used a pen name. He was Mao Zedong, then a student at a teachers’ school in Changsha, Hunan. He later led the Chinese Communist Party.

Mao wrote that the nation was weak and its people’s bodies were weak too. He blamed schools that valued only book learning. He urged daily exercise and called physical education the base of moral and mental growth. The essay reflected a wide belief of the time linking fit bodies to a strong nation.

After the People’s Republic was founded in 1949, the state built sport through national committees. A 1950s slogan credited to Mao urged people to develop sport and strengthen their health. It was painted on stadium walls. Such slogans tied personal fitness to national strength.

Japan in 1931, the Soviet Union in 1938 and Japan again in 2012 all put combat arts into official programs. Each government gave written reasons. Japan’s 1931 plan spoke of loyalty and spirit. The Soviet GTO badge spoke of labor and defense. Japan’s 2012 plan spoke of culture and respect.

A health culture is a society’s shared habits and beliefs about keeping bodies well. A state project is a plan a government pushes toward its own goals, such as a stronger army. The same gym class can serve both. Historians look at who wrote the rule, when, and what else the government was doing.

Timing is strong evidence. Japan’s required budo came as its army moved into China. Sambo’s recognition came during a military buildup. Japan’s 2012 rule came in peacetime. Comparing dates with events helps a reader weigh the stated purpose against the likely one.

Martial arts gyms around the world open class with a warm-up and a safety check. The habit protects students more than any piece of gear.

1. Tell a grown-up you are practicing, and practice where one can see you.

2. Clear a space about two big steps wide in every direction. Move pets, bags and furniture.

3. Warm up for five minutes: jog in place, arm circles, leg swings, and gentle knee lifts.

4. Watch the move in the Dojo, step by step. Then try each step slowly before you join them.

5. Use control: stop every strike and kick in the air at the point you choose.

What helps: count the steps out loud. Practice both sides. Rest and drink water between rounds.

Stay safe: practice alone, into the air, never at a person. Keep kicks at knee or belly height until your balance is steady. Falls only on a mat or soft grass. Stop if something hurts.

Karate (kokutsu-dachi) and taekwondo (dwit kubi) both teach a back stance. Taekwondo became a full Olympic medal sport for women and men at the same Games, Sydney 2000, and both build on stances like this one.

1. Stand with your feet in an L shape: the back foot turned out to the side, the front foot pointing forward.

2. Step the front foot about one and a half shoulder-widths ahead.

3. Bend the back knee and sit most of your weight on the back leg. The front knee bends a little.

4. Keep your upper body upright and turned slightly to the side. Hold, then switch.

What helps: line up the front heel with the back heel, like the corner of a letter L.

Stay safe: the back knee points the same way as the back toes.

Karate calls it shuto and taekwondo calls it sonnal. The knife hand uses the firm outer edge of the hand, from the little finger to the wrist.

1. Stand in a back stance with hands up.

2. Open one hand. Keep the fingers straight and together, with the thumb bent in.

3. Bring the hand up near the opposite ear.

4. Swing it outward and forward through the air, leading with the outer edge, at shoulder height. Bring it back. Switch sides.

What helps: tense the hand only at the end of the swing, then relax it.

Stay safe: into the air only; never chop at a person or an object.

The side kick, yeop chagi in taekwondo and yoko-geri in karate, drives the foot out sideways. It asks for balance more than height.

1. Stand sideways to where you will kick, hands up.

2. Lift the kicking knee up across your body. This is the chamber.

3. Turn the standing foot so its heel points toward the kick.

4. Push the foot straight out into the air at knee or belly height, leading with the heel. The outer edge of the foot faces down a little.

5. Pull back to the chamber, then put the foot down. Switch sides.

What helps: keep your hands up and lean your upper body slightly away from the kick to balance.

Stay safe: low kicks into the air. Hold a wall while learning.