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Seattle judo and jujutsu

An early history of judo and jujutsu in the Pacific Northwest

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article called Pacific Northwest Judo: First Generation was serialized in the Seattle newspaper, North American Post, on November 26, 1997, and December 5, 1997. Reference notes are omitted because manuscript versions of this article including such data are available at the University of Washington Special Collections, Wing Luke Asian Museum, and Japanese American National Museum.

-- Richard Hayes

Dense fogs often cover Puget Sound during the early morning. One of these still enshrouds the early history of Pacific Northwest judo. Like a Zen parable, this fog begins where it ends, with Osamu Sakamoto and his son.

Twenty-nine-year-old Osamu Sakamoto emigrated to the United States in March 1894. Upon arrival, he worked in a Japanese restaurant in Tacoma.¹ A few months later Sakamoto was working on a farm in Puyallup. A couple months after that he was sweeping sawdust at the Port Blakely mill on Bainbridge Island. In 1897 he moved across the Sound and opened Seattle's first Japanese restaurant. Soon after, he gave up the restaurant for a hotel. "During his business career," said his obituary published in the Seattle Times on April 1, 1954, "he operated four hotels, three furniture stores, a small trucking business and vegetable stands. He retired in 1930, and his wife, Tsuchi, died in 1952."

Osamu Sakamoto also did jujutsu. He had learned it while serving in the Japanese Navy, and around 1910, he started teaching its rudiments to his 7-year-old son James Yoshinori.

James Sakamoto was an excellent athlete, and in his senior year his high school yearbook described him as the "best line player ever seen in Seattle high school football." He was also extremely literate, and following graduation, he attended two years of college at Princeton. After that he found work as an English-language editor for a New York City newspaper called the Japanese American News. At nights he boxed, first as an amateur at the Japanese Christian Institute and later as a professional. Although the Honolulu Advertiser called Sakamoto "a featherweight boxer, who is making good in New York rings," in 1927 he suffered detached retinas during a fight in Utica, New York, and upon returning to Seattle a few months later he was almost blind. 

With few job prospects in front of him, James Sakamoto borrowed some money from his father and started an English-language weekly called the Japanese-American Courier. The first English-language newspaper published for any North American Japanese community, its first issue appeared on January 1, 1928. Seven years later, sports editor Bill Hosokawa stated the Courier's editorial policy as follows:

"The news is first-hand. The news is authentic. The news is new, and not rehashed from some press report everyone has seen. The story is timely and local in aspect."

Hosokawa did not exaggerate. With the creation of the Japanese-American Courier, the fog lifts, and daylight breaks on Seattle judo. Between 1894 and 1928, however, the fog remains. The following are the tips of the mountains peeking through.

October 8, 1903: Yoshitsugu Yamashita, 6-dan, his 25-year-old wife Fude, and his 19-year-old assistant Saburo Kawaguchi arrive in Seattle. Yamashita came to Seattle for the purpose of teaching judo to James Nathan Hill, the spoiled son of Seattle businessman Sam Hill.

October 17, 1903: Sam Hill hires the Seattle Theatre for a private exhibition of Yamashita's judo. While this was probably the first public exhibition of Kodokan judo in North America, it was, as far as Ed Hughes of the Seattle Times was concerned, purely exhibition stuff.

February 22, 1904: In an article describing how the Russo-Japanese War affected Japanese American pride, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer describes how a "six-foot young man, who wears a frown that would scare a Jap boy² under ordinary conditions," apologized after an Issei janitor he had insulted protested strongly. The reason was that "the tall youth could already in fancy feel himself flying through space, for he had seen Japanese wrestlers at work."

January 3, 1905: To celebrate the fall of Port Arthur, the Issei of Vancouver, British Columbia, hold a sumo tournament at City Hall. This was fast moving country-style sumo rather than ponderous professional sumo and even European Canadians in the crowd enjoyed the bouts. As a reporter for the Vancouver Daily Province said afterward, "Bouts seldom last more than a minute at the rate the little Orientals carry them out. Neither are there distressing waits. One duel is over and another commences immediately."

February 12, 1905: "Jap Whips American," reads the headline in the Seattle Times:

"S. Ugvin, a Japanese lodging house keeper, badly worsted William E. Brinson, a six-footer from Fort Lawton, in a street fight in the lower part of the city last night. Brinson called the Japanese a Russian and then the trouble began. When Patrolmen Hubbard and Freeman arrived the little Jap had the American soldier down in the street, pummeling him in the face. Both were arrested, and when the soldier arrived at police headquarters he presented a gory appearance. Aside from a slight scratch on the face, the Jap was uninjured. Both men were charged with fighting."

March 17, 1905: Dr. Benjamin Franklin Roller, head of the University of Washington's physical culture department, showcases his new gymnasium by staging a public athletic exhibition. Due to the ongoing Russo-Japanese War, there was considerable local interest in things Japanese. Therefore Roller's exhibition included demonstrations of gekken [Japanese swordsmanship] and jujutsu. During these shows, Izumi explained the rules to the spectators while Ipani and Fujihara wrestled and Kawakami and Sujihara fenced.

July 20, 1905: While passing through Seattle, Baron Jutaro Komura donates $500 toward the maintenance of Seattle's Japanese language school. This school was organized in the rooms of the Japanese Association on Second Avenue around 1903. Designed to supplement rather than replace the American public schools, it taught Japanese language, history, and ethics. Its first teacher was a chain-smoking Japanese schoolteacher named Suy Shibayama. In August 1905, Shibayama's classes had about 15 children aged 4 to 11 years. Over the next 30 years, enrollment increased dramatically. That said, girls were considerably more likely to attend Japanese language school than were boys, as the latter often cut classes to play ball. One reason for judo instruction was to teach these boys the manners they did not learn in school.

August 31, 1905: Japan Day is held at Portland's Lewis and Clark Exposition. Although not specifically mentioned in any Portland newspapers Bunuyemon Nii and Shiroe Sato apparently gave a demonstration of Kito-ryu jujutsu as part of the associated festivities. A direct ancestor of Kodokan judo, Kito-ryu jujutsu was designed to defeat armored men. It also taught some bojutsu, or quarterstaff fighting. Kodokan judo, on the other hand, was entirely empty-handed.

February 26, 1906: In Vancouver, British Columbia, Professor Y. Ito gives a jujutsu exhibition at the English Bay Bathing and Athletic Club. According to the Vancouver Daily Province:

"He will give exhibitions every night this week, accompanying them with verbal explanations. He claims that a person versed in the art can more than hold his own against an individual of superior strength. Admission is free, but intending visitors are requested to obtain tickets from the secretary, as the accommodation of the hall is limited."

After leaving Vancouver, Ito apparently rode the rails east, as in May someone named Ito was showing jujutsu to members of Montreal wrestling clubs. According to the Montreal Gazette for May 8, 1906:

"The Japanese wrestlers wore kimonos and played their part on the line of Cornish wrestlers. Footwork played a prominent part in their sport, and the man who is thrown is supposed to let go when his opponent knocks his props from under. Ito was smarter with the feet, but the other chap did not seem to be so well up in the art and held on when he should have let go¼ It seems that there are various degrees of points according to the manner of the fall. How the points go cannot be told here¼ [But] when Ito had thrown Komuri [sic] twelve times and Komuri had thrown Ito four times, the affair ended."

March 10, 1907: A full-page description of the Seattle Dojo appears in the Seattle Times. The judo club was located at 622 Maynard Street. It was apparently organized sometime in late 1906, most likely by Iitaro Kano (or Kono), a Kodokan 2-dan who had arrived in Seattle on May 20, 1903. During the 1910s, Kano also started judo clubs in Spokane and Chicago.

July 10, 1907: Tokugoro Ito, 3-dan, arrives in Seattle. Often attributed with establishing the Seattle Dojo, Ito is more accurately described as the man who popularized the Seattle Dojo. Be that as it may, the Seattle Dojo is the oldest active Kodokan judo club in the United States, as Honolulu's Shunyokan Dojo dates its establishment to March 17, 1909, while the Los Angeles Dojo dates to early 1910.

October 4, 1907: In New Westminster, British Columbia, Leopold McLaglan (the 6-foot-4, 220-pound brother of actor Victor McLaglen) engages Vancouver's T.H. Kanada in a professional jujutsu match. The sportswriter for the Vancouver Daily Province was sorely disappointed, writing afterward:

"For two hours the spectators saw nothing but Kanada crouching on the mat with McLaglen [sic] on top of him and there was little, if any, jiu-jitsu to the performance¼ It was apparent to everyone that McLaglen's knowledge of the game could be covered with a pinhead."

Ed Hughes of the Seattle Times was equally blunt, calling McLaglan "a poor wrestler and worse boxer." Not caring what the skeptics thought, McLaglan went on to claim the "Jiu-Jitsu Championship of the World" and to say that the world heavyweight wrestling and boxing champions Frank Gotch and Jack Johnson were afraid to meet him.

February 1908: Shuhei Oda, 1-dan, arrives in Seattle. A Waseda University graduate, Oda stayed at the Seattle Dojo until 1910, when he got a job working on a logging crew near Tenino, a town located about fifteen miles south of Olympia.

April 18, 1908: Tokugoro Ito participates in a "jujitsu demonstration" at Egan's Hall in Seattle.

January 29, 1909: Following the example of some East Indian students, the University of Washington's Japanese students establish a Japanese Students Club. The club's constitution said that the purpose of this club was to promote "mutual fellowship and benefit among the members, as well as to take an interest in public affairs." Essentially a fraternity ("Hell Week" was instituted in 1924), members were encouraged to participate in any activity that would bring credit on the Japanese. Athletics was such an area, and from the mid-1910s until 1942, club members were always holding judo and kendo demonstrations and trying out for the University athletic squads. On the other hand, members were strongly discouraged from "reporting to the white men always our dark side and inner troubles," and one former club president who violated this rule received death threats and ultimately asked for police protection.

April 21, 1909: The University of Washington physician David C. Hall announces that the age of the average Japanese student enrolled at the University of Washington is 24 years. His height is 63.1 inches. His weight is 100.7 pounds. And, while far from the weakest man on campus, he probably wasn't strong enough to do more than eight chin-ups or dips.

September 2, 1909: In Seattle, judoka Tokugoro Ito wins a jacketed wrestling match with wrestler Eddie Robinson of Los Angeles.

September 18, 1909: During Seattle's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 30 Japanese men and two Japanese women put on a judo demonstration. The program included explanations, arranged wrestling (kata), and free wrestling (randori). Seattle players included Tokugoro Ito, Iitaro Kano, Fujimoto, and Hagiwara. Out-of-town players included Kuwahara of Los Angeles, Oda of Portland (probably Shuhei Oda), and Fukuda of Denver. The highlight of the evening was when Ito threw five men in succession.

November 12, 1909: In Seattle, Tokugoro Ito wins a jacketed wrestling match with San Francisco's George Braun. Three days later an editorialist for the Seattle Daily Times wrote:

"Men who bought ringside seats for the match between the American and the Japanese at the Seattle Theatre on Friday night paid at the rate of about a dollar a minute for their entertainment. The audience was mainly composed of Japanese and they enjoyed the performance hugely. The white men were not as well pleased. Jiu jitsu may be a fine game but we have not yet been educated enough to appreciate its finer points and until we are it is a sport that is merely brutal and disgusting."

January 10, 1910: A Japanese community theater called the Nippon Kan ("Japan Hall") opens at Yesler Street and Seventh Avenue in Seattle. The brick building was four stories high, with a basement. It was financed by Masajiro Furuya's Cascade Investment Company, and originally cost $90,000. (Fifty thousand went for the land and the rest went for the structure.) To give an idea of what a show at the pre-Great War Nippon Kan was like, the following describes a visit to its predecessor that appeared in the 1908 edition of the Broadway High School yearbook, Sealth:

"Upon entering the hall, as there was no real theatre building, our eyes were attracted by many sheets of white paper, with Japanese writing, hanging along the walls. These represent the names of ever actor and all the parts they have ever played."

"[The men sat on the main floor while the women sat in the balcony.] The air was filled with smoke because many spectators smoke and nothing but cigarettes; many women follow the example set by men."

Although a Japanese gambling syndicate known as the Toyo Club organized paying shows, community organizations could rent the Nippon Kan for just five dollars a day. Therefore the hall was for many years Seattle's main venue for Kabuki plays and judo, kendo, and sumo tournaments.

March 11, 1910: The Japanese Association in Bellingham, Washington, decides, in the words of the Bellingham Herald, "to take up the matter of general athletic development for members of the association during the coming months." Continued the newspaper:

"This will include a line of sports generally practiced by the American school boys. Many of the Japanese are well trained at the present time physically, but when it comes to sports such as played by the average American kid they are not there."

March 16, 1910: In Seattle, Tokugoro Ito wins a jacketed wrestling match with Seattle's Julius Johnson. This victory particularly impressed the local sports, as everyone knew Johnson, and respected his wrestling ability.

April 4, 1910: Baron Dairoku Kikuchi, president of Japan's Imperial University at Kyoto, tells an audience at the University of Washington that the fundamental aims of traditional Japanese education included both mental and moral training. Elsewhere, Kikuchi wrote that despite the many changes in Japan during the past 40 years:

"Japanese children begin studying morals as soon as they enter school and continue it throughout their educational course. The regulations provide that they shall study such virtues as filial piety and obedience to elders, affection and friendship, frugality and industry, modesty, fidelity and courage, and some of the duties toward the state and society."

April 1910: An Issei named Jimmy Uncki (sic) moves to Spokane. Uncki advertised himself as a professor of jujutsu, and actively sought matches with local wrestlers. Unfortunately he didn't get any, and after a couple months he had taken to begging. This got him arrested. And, not having the money to pay the fine, Uncki also became the first Issei to break rocks for the city.

May 22, 1910: "Rather than submit to the demands of a gang of Japanese blackmailers," said the Seattle Times:

"Guichi Inoue, a Japanese wrestler known to the Orientals of Seattle, shot and instantly killed Matsida Kamada, shortly after 9 o'clock last night at Seventh Avenue and Weller Street."

"According to Inoue, Kamada long had been known as the leader of a gang of highbinders that has been the terror of Japanese in Seattle for the past ten years. To Captain of Police L.J. Stuart Inoue said he was glad he had killed what he termed a 'bad gambler.'"

"Inoue is known to the Japanese of Seattle as an expert in jiu jitsu. He recently appeared at the old Arcade dance hall in an exhibition."

June 11, 1910: Japanese Americans give a judo demonstration during the dedication of Tacoma's Stadium High School Coliseum. The wrestlers probably included the training partners of professional wrestler Matty Matsuda, who, in the words of the Tacoma Daily Ledger, "has been training for the past week at the Japanese gymnasium on Tacoma Avenue, where he is the idol of the Japanese colony in Tacoma."

October 27, 1910: To celebrate a visit to Seattle by Professor Tsunejiro Tomita, 6-dan, Tokugoro Ito stages a judo tournament at the Nippon Kan. Professor Tomita, said the Seattle Times, "has been in the East [New York, mostly] for many years and has had experiences in giving lessons in jiu jitsu to American athletes. He is on his way back to Japan." The article added that Ito's Japanese Athletic Training Center, as the writer's Japanese informant correctly translated the term "Seattle Dojo," was located on Main Street, near the corner of Eighth Avenue South.

December 23, 1910: In Ellensburg, Washington, the Issei wrestler Matty Matsuda meets Bruce Ashman in a catch-as-catch-can wrestling match. Says the Seattle Times afterward:

"Ashman refused to go on unless he was guaranteed 75 per cent of the gate receipts, win or lose. Finally Matsuda agreed to give Ashman 50 per cent, win or lose, and donated his share for a big Christmas dinner for poor children. The men had not been on the mat a moment when trouble started. The Jap got a head hold on Ashman, his arm crossing the latter's mouth. Ashman took a mouthful of Japanese flesh between his teeth. The crowd yelled and hooted the white man. Some of them jumped over the footlights and the ringside spectators jumped through the ropes and a free-for-all fight with a crowd of Ashman's backers from Cle Elum followed. Police officers announce that the town will be closed against wrestling for the remainder of the winter."

May 18, 1911: In Seattle, Tokugoro Ito defeats a British wrestler named Joe Acton. Acton had studied judo in London, but said the Seattle Times, "right now he is willing to admit that Ito has forgotten more about jiu-jitsu than he will ever know."

June 9, 1911: In Portland, Tokugoro Ito defeats a wrestler called Farmer Watson. Reported the Oregonian the following morning:

"Watson proved himself to be a gamey grappler, but his opponent was not only his superior at the Nipponese game, but who was also the stronger of the two men. Ito is possessed of wonderful muscular development."

"Previous to the main event an interesting demonstration of the Japanese suma [sic] system was staged by four agile Japs, and after this four more pupils of the Portland Japanese Training School gave exhibition matches of jiu-jitsu. The suma style, as demonstrated by the quartet, was the most popular event of the night, aside from the main event."

January 26, 1912: The Seattle Press Club stages what Ed Hughes called the "first jiu-jitsu match seen in public in Seattle where the men were evenly matched." The occasion was an athletic smoker staged held at the Arctic Club. The players were S. Hanagata and C. Sato. Hanagata won, continued Hughes, "but not until after Sato had given him tough battles in the two bouts. The second bout was stopped when Hanagata had Sato in such a way that if he resisted further one leg and one arm would have been broken. The referee in these bouts had to keep his eyes and wits about him, for these Japanese boys do not quit, no matter how badly they are hurt, and it is the duty of the referee to stop the bout and pick the winner when he thinks one of the men is in danger of being seriously hurt."

Two months later, Hanagata was boxing for Seattle trainer Lonnie Austin. According to the Times, Hanagata, "is only 23 years old, has good habits and is built like a speed merchant... The brown boy hits like the kick of a peevish mule and he is fast on his feet. There is no question of his gameness, for any man who can stand that jiu-jitsu stuff as he used to do it just simply has to be game."

There was evidently another Japanese boxer in Seattle about the same time, too, as on May 27, 1912 the Honolulu Advertiser reported that "the Japanese boxer Yamogata arrived last week from Seattle," and that in 20 fights in the neighborhood of Seattle he "has never been defeated. He is said to be rugged and game and to possess a fair share of cleverness and a punch which has put an opponent to sleep on several occasions."

November 19, 1912: A touring vaudeville troupe known as the Mikado's Royal Japanese Athletes works Seattle's Orpheum Theater. (For a photo, see the Tacoma Daily News, August 22, 1912, page 10.) Enthused Seattle theater critic J. Willis Sayre:

"Once seen here with Barnum & Bailey's Circus, they specialize on jiu jitsu and wrestling [e.g., sumo]. At the beginning the three Japanese maidens, walking along and attending strictly to their Japanese knitting, are accosted by Nippon youths with flirting intent. The honorable mashers are floored in the twinkling of an eye, no matter from what point they begin their attack, and seemingly perfect holds are broken as easily as a campaign promise."

"Then follows the wrestling, rough, quick and potent stuff that is not without its comedy element. The Japs, more than a dozen in number, drew big applause for their clever performance."

December 14, 1913: The Seattle Dojo holds its fifth annual tournament at the Nippon Kan. According to the Seattle Times, "exhibits of physical culture, wrestling, boxing, and jiu jitsu were presented by the thirty well-trained athletes whom Prof. R. Fukuda has trained to a high state of efficiency." The school was said to have a total enrollment of more than 150 students, and methods taught included boxing, wrestling, sumo, judo, and kendo. Promoters included C. Sato, S. Hanagata, and Yasutaro Miyazawa.

December 11, 1914: The Seattle Athletic Club organizes ten boxing bouts to welcome former heavyweight boxing champion James J. Corbett to Seattle. According to the Seattle Times, the bill included "a jiu jitsu match between Japanese experts."

December 22, 1914: "Fourteen Japs, including a couple of girls," says Seattle theater critic J. Willis Sayre, "hold the top position on the new Pantages bill of vaudeville. The Orientals give an exhibition of jiu jitsu and Japanese wrestling [sumo] which has a lot of interest for Occidental audiences. They go at their combats in earnest and some of those impacts of human bodies on the mat made the stage shake. The two girls demonstrate to the women of Seattle just how easy it is to cope with a highwayman: break a few of his bones and toss him into the middle of the street. It looks easy to see them do it, but most Seattle women are apt to continue their present habit of screaming and using hatpins."

Other acts on the same bill included a Scotch comedian, jugglers, a dog act, a short play, and various dancers. The reason, explained Pacific Northwest historian Murray Morgan many years later, was that theater owner Alexander Pantages "wasn't out to improve the customer's minds; he just wanted their money."

January 30, 1915: Two Seattle Japanese stage "jui jitsui" bouts during the University of Washington's annual upperclassman smoker. The venue was the men's dormitory, Lewis Hall.

July 1915: The Japanese Farmers' Association of Fife, Washington (a farm town located a few miles north of Tacoma), organizes a Seinen Kai, or Young People's Association. While the outdoor sport of choice was baseball, indoor sports included judo and gekken, as kendo was then known. The club met every Sunday, and by 1917 boasted nearly 30 members.

1917: According to one source, Mitsuo Fukuhara organizes a judo club at Tacoma's St. Paul and Tacoma sawmill. According to another source, it was Sohei Odawara in 1913.³ 

October 20, 1917: In Seattle, wrestler Ad Santel beats judoka Taro Miyake in a jacketed wrestling match. Said the Seattle Daily Times afterward, "Santell [sic] lifted the Japanese bodily from the floor with a crotch and half-nelson hold and slammed him to the mat so hard that the Japanese had dizzy spells for half an hour after the fall."

November 2, 1917: Daisuke Sakai, a judo 4-dan active in the Seattle Dojo, has a jacketed wrestling match with Ad Santel in San Francisco. Said the Seattle Daily Times, "The pair wrestled a twenty-minute draw in the first period and then the Japanese was put down twice, once in 12 and again in 4 minutes. An arm scissors did the trick in both instances." This was not Sakai's only contribution to American judo, however, as in 1923 Sakai also helped arrange for Honolulu's Shunyokan Judo Dojo to become affiliated with the large Japanese judo institute known as the Kodokan. Also noteworthy is that upon returning to Japan Sakai stood for political office and eventually became a member of the Diet for Fukuoka Prefecture.

March 15, 1918: In Spokane, judoka Taro Miyake beats wrestler John Berg in a jacketed wrestling match. The winning move was tomoenage, or circle throw.

December 7, 1918: After a proposed dance is canceled due to the threat of influenza, soldiers assigned to a training unit on the University of Washington campus respond by staging an athletic smoker. According to the University of Washington Daily, the night's entertainment included, "a company of Japs from downtown [who] staged an exhibition of the jui-jitsu (sic) art. The boys immediately picked on one of the members, Togo by name, and favored him throughout the performance, as the others' names were unpronounceable."

1920: The Seattle Dojo and the St. Paul and Tacoma Dojo begin holding annual spring tournaments.

1923: Ryoichi Iwakiri begins teaching judo in Fife. Kichigoro ("Kay") Yamamoto, who had won the Northwest AAU wrestling title at 125 pounds in May 1912, owned the barn in which the Fife Dojo met.

1924: Canada's first judo dojo opens in Kanzo Ui's apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia. Shigetaka Sasaki, a 21-year old Kito-ryu 1-dan who had moved to Canada in 1922, was its head instructor. When the club outgrew Ui's living room, it moved into a building near the Gospel Church on Powell Street. Known as the Tai-iku (literally "physical cultivation," but usually translated as "physical culture or education") Dojo, the Vancouver Dojo's monthly fees were thirty cents for adults, ten cents for boys, and five cents for girls. While this sum barely covered the cost of rental, many members could not afford so much, and Sasaki and his friends routinely found themselves covering the difference.

Twelve Nisei youths under the leadership of 13-year-old Mitsuo Nakata establish a clubhouse in an unused pioneer cabin near Bellevue. While there were no formal judo classes in Bellevue until 1932, some youths may have learned some judo before then, as a local man named Toyogo Yoshino enjoyed teaching judo to children.

Judo classes are introduced to the south Seattle neighborhood of South Park. The first instructor was an Issei 3-dan named Shiraji.

Seattle's Asahi and Mikado baseball clubs merge with the Seattle Dojo to form the Nippon Athletic Club. But eighteen months this union dissolved. "The youngsters who pulled out," said the Seattle Times on October 31, 1926, "banded together under the name of the Taiyo Club," and the split was so acrimonious that the two teams refused to meet in city league football games.

August 1924-April 1925: Japanese professional wrestlers including Shinzo Takagaki and S. Takahashi work British Columbia and Washington State. Although touted as world judo champions, both men lost about as many matches as they won. They also quit surprisingly easily, Takahashi even forfeiting matches where he lost the flip of the coin in the third round, thus not getting to wear a jacket. This lack of fighting spirit suggesting to both Japanese and European Americans that perhaps the outcomes of their matches were fixed.

February 25, 1925: "Jiu jitsu" is listed among the attractions offered during the University of Washington Chem Shack smoker held at Bagley Annex. Tickets cost a quarter each, and cider, doughnuts, cigarettes, and punch were on hand. One hopes that the bout was at least as exciting as the speeches given by George Eichhorn and Dr. H.K. Benson, and the magic acts done by Earl Little and Lindsay MacHarrie.

1925: The St. Paul and Tacoma Dojo affiliates with the Tacoma Buddhist Church. Since the club no longer had any association with the sawmill, it also shortened its name to Tacoma Dojo.

November 4, 1925: Several "jiu jitsu" matches grace the annual University of Washington Chem Shack smoker. To keep excitement high, Hugh Miller's three-piece orchestra played during intermissions.

1926: Vancouver's Tai-iku Dojo moves to the ground floor of a Japanese rooming house at 132 Dunlevy Avenue in Vancouver. Etsuji Morii, who ran a gambling club at 380 Powell Street, paid for the move, probably as his way of returning the house cut to the community. Other early patrons included Gentaro Isobe, Eikichi Kagetsu, Ichiji Sasaki, and Toshiaki Sumi.

The Portland Dojo opens. This was a Kito-ryu school organized by the same Bunuyemon Nii who had put on a demonstration during the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905. Early students included Art Sasaki.

April 26, 1926: "By a feat of jiu jitsu," said the Seattle Times, "T. Hiraiwa, a repairman, took a revolver away from a bandit late last night, when the thug attempted to hold him up, gave the man a beating, and landed him in the city jail."

September to October 1926: A Japanese schoolteacher named Misao Yamagata visits schools in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Although her mission was to study the ways that the Americans taught home economics and gymnastics, the Japan Times noted she had "been trained in jujutsu by Mr. Jigoro Kano, the famous jujutsu master."

1927: The Steveston Dojo opens in Steveston, British Columbia. Training took place in space rented from the local Japanese Language School. The first Canadian Championships were held soon after, probably in the spring of 1928. (Although participants were all from British Columbia, because all extent Canadian judo clubs were in British Columbia they were known as the Canadian Championships. In the modern sense of the term, the first truly all-Canadian judo championships were held in Winnipeg in 1959.)

Summer 1927: Bunuyemon Nii establishes a Kito-ryu jujutsu dojo near Hood River, Oregon. Mokuo ("Frank") Tomori was the club supervisor. Resenting the fact that a Japanese could afford a Buick when they and their parents could not, local youths sometimes threw stones at Tomori's car. One day, Tomori told Kazuo Ito:

"I, having a license [black belt ranking] from the Kito School of judo, got infuriated. I stopped the car and challenged them. If I kept a certain distance from them I would be hit by a full swing, so in self-defense I knelt on one knee, crouched low and waited. Since whites are unstable around the hips, I could easily block their legs and throw them."

October 1927: The White River Valley Japanese farmers' cooperative starts a judo club in an Iseri family barn located near Auburn.

White River Valley Dojo's foundation meeting in 1927. (Photo courtesy of Mae Iseri Yamada.)

November 1927: Officer Svend J. Jorgensen of the Seattle Police Department starts teaching jujutsu tricks to Seattle traffic officers. Classes were held Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Jorgensen got this job partly because, in the words of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "obstreperous persons have attempted to best a police officer by resisting arrest," and mainly because he was a good self-promoter.

January 1, 1928: The first issue of James Y. Sakamoto's Japanese-American Courier hits the streets. The fog covering the history of Pacific Northwest judo lifts.