So many divides in area judo

Ever wonder why there’s so many judo associations in various parts of the world, rather than just one to a specific area? It can be summed up in one word – personalities. 

There’s a well-used saying in many types of spiritual and community programs which if practiced, can help a lot in solving many of the major issues. Principles before personalities. It essentially means that once any organization agrees on a group of polices and agreements, than whenever any conflict arises, and it always does, that the people involved take themselves, and their egos out of it, and only focus on the problem and what the solution is. 

Take Judo Ontario, which is a provincial (area of Canada) leg of Judo Canada. Each of the area spokes, if big enough have regional divisions (East, West, etc…) to them. 

Now typical disagreements usually are made up of very small and petty resentments, and only snowball from there. An example might be a student leaves one dojo to another. Or one dojo got something better than another. 

I’ve watched in awe, in this past year as how every dime collected has been directed at competitor only endeavors, without a single dime spent on the majority of members who are recreational.

As only one example, besides giving very expensive awards (valued at about $200 per) to the elite of who only a small committee group decide on who gets them, they stopped sending so much as a certificate to the lower level recreational members, even though they still pay a very high annual fee.

Due to past problems in the judo world for its specific area, Judo Ontario decided on creating a harassment and procedures document that on the surface appears to be official, yet if read deeply enough it has never been court challenged, since it would be easy to point out that the attached conflict of interest policy contradicts its own guidelines, by allowing the president, or his/her designate the final say. 

Getting to the main point; if a conflict arises between two members of the same association, one only has to use catch words, like “harassment” or “abusive”, now that can sometimes mean one person was told off about something at some judo event, and suddenly can be threatened with the self-serving policy manual. 

Sometimes the only option is to separate from some individuals, however, in order to do that, a new association has to be created with other like-minded individuals. Another saying in judo, if you get a resentment, all you need is some mats and a space to play in.