Kata & Randori
Film and text: Rudolf Di Stefano – Reader: Louise Baker – Translation: Yann Ao’Drenn
We, practitioners of Junomichi, refer to the origin of our discipline, namely the work of Jigoro Kano
This loyalty is based on an event that now dates back almost a century and a half.
Let us reflect for a moment on this link which guides our entire practice.
To begin, let us rethink what this singular invention, which Jigoro Kano decided to call judo, was like in its own time.
First of all, it’s important to remember that founding judo was above all an act of modernity:
In Japan, as elsewhere, much of the knowledge that preceded this major transformation was falling into disuse.
Practices and ways of thinking could only continue by finding new methods capable of keeping pace with these profound changes.
The young Jigoro Kano must have had a keen awareness of his time, since at 21 he founded judo and the Kodokan, thus opening a new era for all these understandings which had a thousand-year history, understandings whose unique characteristic was the intimate association of body and mind.
It is important to remember that Jigoro Kano was not the only one to bring about such a transformation. Judo emerged alongside major inventions in very different fields.
Let us take a simple example: the cinematograph, which emerged at the same time, and which opened up an entirely new way of thinking about art and movement, while itself being heir to a long artistic tradition.
Rather than addressing these questions too broadly, let us focus on two creations of Jigoro Kano: two exercises which came into being and which, through their novelty, structured a new practice, namely randori and nage no kata.
Randori opens up a previously unknown realm, in which practitioners can express themselves without conventions, with complete spontaneity and improvisation.
This exercise, of which only embryonic forms existed before the creation of judo, now allows the sentations of body and mind to give rise frely to movement.
Who better than Jigoro Kano himself to describe this new way of acting and expressing oneself: “Randori is a freely consented form of encounter which does not rely on convention, provided that there is mutual respect and that the partner is not harmed.”
The second invention was nage no kata, which he created five years after founding the Kodokan, at the age of 27. It should always be kept in mind that judo is a work of youth.
Of course, the use of forms such as kata long predates the invention of judo, most notably the one we still study today with great commitment, koshiki no kata.
Jigoro Kano thus innovated within his art while inscribing himself in a long lineage, one in which combinations of movement unfold in time and space to form a unified whole.
However, Jigoro Kano introduced a radical change in the conception of kata.
It would no longer be a training form grouping techniques in preparation for combat against an adversary, but rather a new educational means, allowing access to mutual emancipation, with principles accessible to all.
Can we imagine what it must have represented for Kano to place randori and nage no kata at the very heart of his method?
We, as Junomichi practitioners, have the task of reconnecting with this beginning, so that by working and reworking these exercises, we remain in constant contact with this origin, this creative gesture.
To achieve this, we can attempt to understand in an intimate way what both separates these two types of exercise in their radical difference, while at the same time grasping their essential relationship.
The ran of randori reminds us that it is through the free expression of techniques that we educate ourselves, whereas it is through the formalisation of kata that we can reach the interiority of what structures movement , and therefore the principles that underpin it.
In both cases, the aim is to constitute a space capable of allowing a mutual transformation of the partners, one through the expression of spontaneity, the other through the clarification offered by forms.
To grasp what unites these two exercises is to understand how, within each one, it is necessary to introduce something of the other
To understand that a kata, in order not to fall into sterile academicism, must necessarily contain within itself the
Conversely, to understand that in order to achieve the real effectiveness of randori, one must know how to introduce an element of form and composure, whose visible proof will be the expression of its beauty.
Let us look once more at those early practitioners who, despite the long path we have travelled since, still carry this living source, this joy that is proper to all creation.
Rudolf di Stefano, janvier 2026