Edwin Takemori has been teaching Judo at the current post at the Naval Academy since 2001 but overall he’s been practicing the art for more than 60 years!
What’s especially interesting about Takemori is that he has never had a sports related surgery. He credits the length of his career to having mastered breakfalls. That’s one of the first things taught to students across the world but not everyone takes to it as well as him.
His love of teaching and love of Judo are what motivates him, he said. At practice he is on the mat with his students. He said he doesn’t want to be a figurehead.
“A lot of coaches in other sports, they’re just watchers,” he said to capitalgazette.
His philosophy as an instructor is to emphasize safety without changing a player’s competitive attitude. He tells his students not to injure.
“If you injure a player, you’ve lost a partner,” he said.
The training builds strength, coordination, and teaches people to not be afraid to fall, he said.
“The difference between winning and losing to me is, you can’t be afraid,” he said.
Takemori himself is a 7th degree blackbelt — he thinks he could be an 8th degree, but needs to file to paperwork, he said.
Takemori doesn’t have plans to stop coaching anytime soon. It would take a lot to make him stop.
“They’d have to put me six feet under,” he said.
Takemori competed between 1953 and 1969, he said, sometimes in weight classes above his own thanks to his brother. But for the majority of his career he focused on teaching having been inspired by his own instructor.
Takemori embraces the Judo principle of maximum efficiency, minimum effort. As founder Jigoro Kano wrote:
“A main feature of the art is the application of the principles of non-resistance and taking advantage of the opponent’s loss of equilibrium; hence the name jūjutsu (literally soft or gentle art), or judo (doctrine of softness or gentleness)…
…of the principle of the Maximum Efficiency in Use of Mind and Body. On this principle the whole fabric of the art and science of judo is constructed.”
He knew teaching Judo is what he wanted to do, and he also knew he needed to take care of his body. He thinks about how to prepare for injuries, and tells the same to midshipmen — they’re not invincible.
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