Where jujitsu has origins that can be traced back nearly two thousand years, Judo is a relatively recent evolution and owes it existence to one man: Dr. Jigoro Kano.

Jigoro Kano was born in the seaside town of Mikage in Japan on October 28, 1860. He and his family moved to Tokyo in 1871. As a boy, Kano was an undersized, slender and a physically weak child. To improve his health and to learn how to defend himself against bullies at the age of 18 he enrolled in the Tenjin Shinyo Ryu School of jujitsu. Under the guidance of Fukuda Hachinosuke, Kano began his long journey to physical well being. After studying at the Tenjin Shinyo ryu, Kano transferred to the Kito Ryu School to study under Tsunetoshi Iikubo.
    
He soon realised that each school had its strengths and weaknesses. Because there was unnecessary roughness and crudeness in the jujitsu techniques, and because it was difficult to practice without injury he began to reconstruct jujitsu. As he states in his own words: "...so by taking together all the good points I had learned from the various schools and adding thereto my own devices and inventions, I founded a new system for physical culture and mental training." Kano called his new system Kodokan Judo to differentiate it from the jujitsu forms. "Judo" means "the gentle way" and "kodokan" generally means "a school for studying the way", "the way" being the concept of life itself.
        
The Kodokan was first established in 1882, in the Eishoji Buddhist temple in Tokyo with only nine students in the first year. Starting in 1889 Kano left Japan to visit Europe and the U. S. He traveled abroad eight times to teach judo and several times to attend the Olympics and its committee meetings.

While returning home from an IOC meeting in Cairo where he succeeded in having Tokyo nominated as a site for the 1940 Olympics, a lifetime devoted to Judo ended when Kano died of pneumonia aboard the S. S. Hikawa Maru on 4 May 1938, at the age of seventy-eight year.
    
When Japan hosted the 1964 Olympics, Judo was given its first opportunity as an event. Of the sixteen medals awarded for judo, Japan won three gold medals, and one silver medal. Judo was no longer a Japanese sport but had developed to become an international sport.