Kuzushi and Sushi: November 2012

The company logo.

A few weeks ago I sent out invites to a Facebook page called “Atarashiido – Judo by Judoka” and I thought it would helpful to provide some context! The idea is to centralize high-quality judo media, driven entirely by reader contributions. There are millions of judoka in the world with interesting stories to share—it’s not just the Kimura’s and the Mifune’s that matter! “Ju” is a concept that can express itself in many different ways, from tournament performance to personal conduct. Unfortunately, meaningful content gets lost among the dribble on forums and YouTube, to the extent that people begin to associate those awful things with judo culture. Ultimately I want to help change the face of judo online, since the Internet is an integral part of the life experience of the modern judo players. The average person will inevitably attempt to supplement their training with online materials.

Search box blocked by control panel
dropdown on JudoForum, 11/24/12.

The natural question at this point is “Aren’t there other judo websites online? Why should I care about this one?” First and foremost is the aesthetic quality of the current batch of judo websites. From coding errors to poor design motifs, they make me less likely to stick around and enjoy the material. Certain forums are so poorly maintained that they are host to malware, which creates a cost-benefit scenario that doesn’t work in their favor. A deliberately simple design will reduce the need for maintenance, as well as allow reader to focus on the content. No clip art, no terrible stock GIFs of the Gokyo, no broken search boxes… just judo.

Next, I’ve found that even the best online judo personalities tend to run out of things say rather quickly. If you’re talented, you’ll be able to master one, maybe two techniques in your lifetime, meaning that it will be impossible to constantly put out high quality material on a wide variety of subjects (like many people attempt to do). Because we’re drawing on the wealth of knowledge of entire community, we will be able to post original and diverse content on a regular basis, something that I have not seen in my many hours of online perusing. The staff will take on an editorial role, to work with contributors to maintain the quality of our website.