RIZAL?S LOVE AFFAIR WITH JUDO
By Eddie Alinea
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 30 Dec 2012
MANILA(PNA)- Today, the nation pays tribute to our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal, who was shot dead by musketry at Bagumbayan (now Rizal Park at the Luneta) on December 30, 1896 for inspiring the Filipinos to rise against conqueror Spain.
Following tradition, the country?s highest government officials, led by President Noynoy Aquino, will lead today?s commemorative activities centred at the site of Dr. Rizal?s death, in his place of birth in Calamba in Laguna, in Dapitan City where he was exiled prior to his execution and other key cities in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
Historians and columnists will, again, recall his heroic deeds in newspapers and other medium.People?s Journal Sports and its counterpart in sister publication Manila Standard join in the celebration by reliving the National Hero?s involvement in the sports he loved most during his athletics days.
Known to many, Dr. Rizal excelled as a practitioner of the sport of fencing like many of the Illustrados and member of the inteligencia as well as the game of mind chess.
Very few knew though that the Pride of Calamba was also competitive in judo as a sportsman. And if the former Philippine Amateur Judo Association president and retired police officer Rey Jaylo is to be believed, Dr. Rizal could have earned the distinction of being the first Filipino and, for that matter Malay to have practiced and taught the martial arts discipline.
Writer Consolacion Cristobal-Reyes once wrote that during one of Dr. Rizal?s visits to Japan, he admired the simple but bountiful of beauty of that country, the industriousness of the people and the distinctiveness of the Japanese art and culture.
Judo was among the arts that caught the attention of Dr. Rizal, who, at that time, was courting a Japanese beauty, who Capt. Jaylo identified only as Osei San. The girl?s father Jiguro Kano, according to Jaylo in an interview while still at the helm in PAJA, happened to be a proponent of the Kodokan style of judo. In his desire to attract the girl, the Filipino playboy enrolled at the school ran by the San?s father where he learned the rudiment of the sport.
Dr. Rizal fell in love, not only with the girl but the sport as well, whose principle of employing the mental and physical strength taught to him by Kano, he espoused even when he returned to the country.
Kodokan involved the practiced the ?Way of Ju,? which means natural way which accords with the truth of the universe and the one that human beings have to follow.
?Dr. Rizal?s exile to Dapitan gave him the opportunity to practice the educational theories he learned from his travel around the world,? Cristobal-Reyes wrote in her article. ?He opened a school of judo for seventeen boys, mostly sons of the living citizens of the town.?
?Aside from teaching his students the three Rs, Rizal made his pupils do rigid physical training he learned while a judo student,? Cristobal-Reyes wrote. ?With the seashore serving as outdoor gymnasium, he and his pupils set up bodybuilding paraphernalia composed of parallel bars, Roman ring and chinning bar.?
?Together with his physical fitness program, Rizal propagated the Japanese sport of judo, Spanish fencing, American boxing, the native arnis and marksmanship (shooting),? the article said.
Jaylo, for his part, said that this is the reason why up to this day, youth from Zamboanga, especially those from Dapitan, continued to be source of top-caliber judokas, who earned slots in the national teams.Jaylo cited as example, John Baylon, winner of a record nine gold medals in judo in the Southeast Asian games.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea.
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