IDO MOVEMENT FOR CULTURE

At present the world of elite sport concentrates mainly on the physical aspect of performance, to lesser extent, on psycholgical conditions of success. Spiritual countenance of a competition has persisted in budo. The question should be asked whether such an assumption is true. To answer the question reference to samurai‘s bushido code and comparison it with the code of European and English knights ought to be done to acknowledge universal values which have remained in combat sports and martial arts. The code of bushido is in many ways similar to the code od knights although the backgrouds are different. Bravery, loyalty, honour, scorn of death, continous training in aim to develop utmost skill were common to both, samurai and knights. These virtues, though higly valued in eastern and western culture, kept on waning with terminating of feudalism. But the spirit of bushido found its place in budo. Proclamation of Japanese emperor in 1882 deprivating shoguns, daymios and samurais of their power converged with the foundation of famous judo school Kodokan. Dangerous jujutsu techniques were replaced with safe judo ones, kendo bamboo shinai substituted sharp as a razor katana, full contact karate gradually became semi contact to avoid deadly battle and replace it with sport competition.
Westernization of sport has changed the concept of budo spirit. It is clearly visible on judo example. Judo after joining Olympic programme in 1972 became similar to all other sports. It lost specificity of budo to a great extent. Best results in continental, world and Olympic competitions have become much more important then self-defence, forms of kata and technical perfection for the sake of study. Even the colour of uniforms has been changed to receive better media reception.
Nevertheless, the spirit of budo, though transformed, has been persevered in martial arts like aikido, iaido, karate and others, hopefully because adepts of budo martial arts train to achieve perfection of physis and spirit but not to compete for medals.