ABSTRACT
In the past, judo,1 along with other oriental martial arts, has not been thought worthy of investigation by scholars in the field of Japanese studies.2 When thinking about processes of cross-cultural dissemination and about representations of “Japan outside Japan,” however, we need to reevaluate Japanese martial arts for their role as culture brokers. Approximately 15,000 Austrians – or 0.2 percent of tiny Austria’s total population – along with 2.5 million other Europeans are regularly exposed to ideological, material, and social aspects of Japanese culture when they dress in Japanese-style judogi, practice at the local dôjô, take part in training sessions framed by the rituals of o-rei and zazen, and communicate in a jargon abundant with Japanese terms such as hantei, soto, maitta, hikiwake, tori, kata, shiai‚ and the like. The numbers above indicate only the surface of a much larger phenomenon: these 15,000 jûdôka are officially registered members of the Austrian Judo Federation (AJF), whose general secretary estimates that there are another 15,000 practitioners who are less interested in membership and the concomitant rights of taking part in official competitions or obtaining kyû/dan grades. Furthermore, other Japanese martial arts, such as karate, kendô, kyûdô, aikidô, and jujutsu, have many adherents of their own but draw on similar systems of meanings.
