Shiro Saigo

was one of the earliest disciples of Judo. Saigo, together with Tsunejiro Tomita, became first in history of judo to be awarded Shodan by the founder of judo Jigoro Kano, who established the kyu-dan ranking system. He was one of the Kōdōkan Shitennō or Four Guardians of the Kodokan along with Yoshitsugu Yamashita, Sakujiro Yokoyama, and Tsunejiro Tomita.

Biography Early life Shiro Saigo was born on Feb 4, 1866 in Aizuwakamatsu, in the Fukushima Prefecture of Japan, the third son of a samurai, Shida Sadajiro. During his childhood, he trained in the fighting style of the Aizu clan, called oshikiuchi.In 1882, Saigo moved to Tokyo and in August of that year, he enrolled at the Kōdōkan, becoming Jigoro Kano's second student. In 1883, along with Tsunejiro Tomita, he became one of the first two to be awarded yudansha rank in any martial art. The very day of their graduation, he would take up the dojoyaburi challenge of Sakujiro Yokoyama, a much heavier jujutsuka, and defeated him, which moved Yokoyama to join the school as well.

Judo challenges Saigō was responsible for an early surge of popularity for Kodokan Judo, when he demonstrated its superiority by easily defeating a much larger opponent:

Similarly, Saigō fought on behalf of Kodokan in 1884, when three fighters of the Yōshin-ryū jūjutsu school named Matsugoro Okuda, Daihachi Ichikawa and Morikichi Otake came to challenge their members. As Kano was out at the moment, they only found Shiro and his colleagues Yokoyama and Tsunejiro Tomita, but those decided to answer the challenge by themselves. Shiro defeated Okuda, throwing him down thrice before finishing him out with his yama arashi. Okuda suffered a concussion and had to be stretchered out. Kano was not pleased with their behavior when he found out, thinking they had shown themselves too eager to fight, but anyway their victories helped to increase Kodokan's renown in Japan. Controlling the match, Kochi tried to throw him with harai goshi and uchi mata, but Saigō slipped out and landed on his feet every time, making Entaro increasingly tired. Saigō then tried to capitalize on with tomoe nage, which Entaro blocked and tried to come back with an osoto gari with no success. Finally, at around 15 minutes an exhausted Entaro left himself open, and the judoka managed to execute his yama arashi. Although his head hit the ground, Entaro got up again, after which Saigo scored another yama arashi, breaking Kochi's shoulder and forcing him to give up the match. After seeing Saigō perform a demonstration of randori, Totsuka increased his praises, stating "the 'genius' word might have been created for someone like Shiro Saigō."

Saigō also fought against Shusaburo Sano, a Totsuka jujutsuka who was supposedly strong enough to bend iron rods with his arms and shatter thick boards with his fists. Sano outweighed Shiro by 30 kg and had trained specifically to counter his yama arashi technique. Indeed, he countered it, throwing Saigō down and pinning him with his weight, but the judoka escaped and applied ude-gatame, making the jujutsuka surrender. As a sign of pardon, however, Kano conceded him the 6th dan after his death.

The main character in Akira Kurosawa's 1943 directorial debut, Sugata Sanshirō, was based on Shiro Saigo, the film being based on the novel of the same name written by Tsunejiro Tomita's son, Tsuneo.