<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay. So 1947, you take over the coaching of the --

YU: '46.

TI: '46, okay. '46. Which is sixty-five, sixty-six years ago?

YU: Yeah.

TI: And you're still involved with the program.

YU: Yeah.

TI: And you've been involved all these years. You know, I just read an amazing statistic, that the San Jose State University's judo team has won the national championship, what, forty-five times?

YU: Fifty-one.

TI: Fifty-one times?

YU: No, wait, you're right. [Laughs]

TI: Forty-five, forty-five times. So in those sixty-five years, you've been the national champion for forty-five of those years.

YU: Uh-huh.

TI: How is that possible? I've never heard of any one school dominating in a sport at the national level like this.

YU: Well, sometimes you recruit, but most of the times I knew the coaches and they would say, "I have, Yosh, I have a good student here that would like to go to school. Can you take him?" I say, "Sure. Send him to San Jose State." And I said, "First, you have to have education in mind, not in judo. I'm not interested in the judo, but you got to be a good student, because when you graduate, I want him to have a degree so that he can get out there." And they say, "Yeah, he's a good student." I say, "Okay. Send him up."

TI: So these are high school coaches who are sending you...

YU: High school, right, right.

TI: But even, every other sport that I know of, that's kind of what coaches, a lot of coaches say. "Come, but first I'm gonna make sure they go to school, it's gonna be education, and then, and then we'll have him on the team." But to win forty-five national champions, championships, that's, that's pretty amazing. I'm trying to think, what's the secret? I mean, what do you do that's different than all the other coaches?

YU: I think we do something different. Everybody thinks that judo, you just throw, and we have, American judo, American judo is that way. Everybody just throws, and if you, if you teach them how to throw, that's fine. If you can't throw 'em, give 'em more strength, give 'em some weightlifting and then, with the power, they throw. Well, we don't use that kind of idea, so ours have been, first, we work them... right now they all come here, San Jose State, but when I had to build them up, I used to have them work on the mat. So you would be coming from Washington maybe, but you do not have any experience and you're sort of scared of taking judo. You hear people getting thrown and getting hurt, so you're scared of getting hurt. So I teach them all mat techniques, so you're on the mat all the time, you don't stand up. You just rub your, rub your back against the mat and move around, and nothing. So that's what I do, and teach them mat holds. And when people learn mat holds, a lot of mat holds, and escape from that, they learn a lot. So you don't have to be lot of, you don't have to have a lot of strength. You don't know a thing about judo, but by doing this you have a lot of fun, you come out and you rub your face against your opponent who's perspiring and you're perspiring, and you, there's sort of a comradeship starts to form. And from that, they said, "Hey, we had a good time. Next, let's take the next semester." Says, "You think you'll show us any standing techniques?" I say, so next semester we teach 'em standing techniques, and by that time they have now got a lot of confidence in the mat. They know that they don't, they won't get hurt, and you give 'em confidence to work. From there, I mix standing and mat techniques, so then we get, go into mat, allow them to do a lot more mat techniques as we go along, I mean standing techniques, as we go along. And they now have confidence that when they hit the mat they don't have to worry about it.

TI: But I'm thinking that many of your students over the years have seen this and participated, and when they go on to coach, don't they teach the same technique then?

YU: They do.

TI: Why can't they beat you, then? [Laughs]

YU: [Laughs] They, we get a lot students now that were former San Jose State...

TI: So they send you all the good, good...

YU: They said, "He's good. I want to send him to you." I say, "Fine."

TI: But did any of your students coach at the college level so they became like a competing --

YU: No, they don't teach at the college level. Most of 'em teach in club, dojo level.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.