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I walked into San Jose State and I thought that I knew everything. He taught me that I really don’t know much.
COLTON BROWN, YOSH UCHIDA’S PUPIL AND U.S. OLYMPIAN
He started the San Jose Buddhist Judo Club and another in Palo Alto. He was the director of the first national Amateur Athletic Union championships in 1953. He founded the National Collegiate Judo Assn. in 1962. A year later, he helped initiate the first nationwide high school interscholastic judo championships. A year after that, he coached the four-man U.S. team in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
“He had a wonderful ability to organize things, and I don’t think that judo would’ve become a national collegiate sport, a national high school sport, a national open sport, if it didn’t have somebody with Yosh’s organizational skills,” said Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a San Jose State graduate and one of the four American judoka at the 1964 Games. “It wouldn’t have grown that fast in the 1950s and ’60s.”
Campbell, who would become a U.S. senator from Colorado, was forced to withdraw from the open weight class in 1964 after tearing the ACL in his knee in his second match. James Bregman emerged from the middleweight division with a bronze medal, the first of 16 Olympic medals won by Americans in judo.
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Yosh Uchida, center, coached the four-man U.S. judo entry in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics: from left, George Harris, James Bregman, Paul Maruyama and Ben Nighthorse Campbell.(San Jose State Athletics Archives)
Quote:
Knowing that Mr. Uchida is not here but he’s still going to be watching, in a sense, that means that he’s with me.
COLTON BROWN
Mike Swain took bronze at the 1988 Seoul Games after becoming the first American man to win the judo world championships in 1987. A New Jersey native, he enrolled at San Jose State upon qualifying for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which the United States boycotted after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. By that time, Uchida’s program was an unparalleled powerhouse. Swain didn’t think twice.
“He was very demanding,” said Swain, who became a coach with the program after qualifying to compete in four Olympics. “Wherever we were going, you had to travel with a suit and tie, and you always got there really early. He was all about discipline. He was the coach of the San Jose State judo team, but he was more of a mentor.”
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Brown, also a New Jersey native, met Uchida in 2009 when he arrived at San Jose State as a teenager. Uchida was approaching 90, but the two connected.
“I walked into San Jose State and I thought that I knew everything,” Brown said. “He taught me that I really don’t know much.”
Brown visited Uchida’s office nearly every day. They regularly ate meals together. Their talks focused not on the sport but on life. On education, on preparing Brown for the day when judo would be in the rearview mirror.
On the mat, Brown helped extend San Jose State’s national judo dominance. The school has won 48 of the 59 men’s National Collegiate Judo Assn. team championships and 24 women’s team championships since women’s competition began in 1975 — the most titles for a school in any American collegiate sport ever.
Brown was a three-time national champion. He rose to team captain — chosen by Uchida — and graduated in 2015. He reported to Brazil the next summer representing the United States, with Uchida in the crowd. He won his first match but lost his second and was eliminated.
Six American judoka competed that year. Travis Stevens won the country’s one medal — a silver in the half-middleweight division. This time, Brown, 29, is one of four Americans and the only man. He’s scheduled to fight at the Nippon Budokan on Wednesday against Liechtenstein’s Raphael Schwendinger. Brown, ranked 28th in the world, is the favorite over the 117th-ranked Schwendinger.
Competitors are guaranteed a medal with four wins by the end of the day. Five victories and Brown would become the second American to earn an Olympic judo gold medal.
“Knowing that Mr. Uchida is not here but he’s still going to be watching, in a sense, that means that he’s with me,” Brown said. “Him being on this earth for this long and being coherent enough to still take interest in me and know that and support me, it means the world to me.”
Brown hasn’t seen Uchida since before the pandemic. He was supposed to attend Uchida’s 100th birthday celebration in April 2020 before it was canceled, and he plans on visiting sometime after the Olympics.
Uchida might be coaching again by then. He wants to return to San Jose State’s dojo — named after him in 1997 — if it reopens this fall.
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Yosh Uchida plans to coach again in the fall if San Jose State’s dojo reopens.(San Jose State Athletics Archives)
Uchida’s checklist isn’t complete. He’s worked with San Jose State President Mary Papazian in recent years to create an exchange program between the school — one of six official U.S. judo Olympic training centers — and Japanese universities. The timeline is unknown, but he’d like to see his efforts come to fruition before he turns 110. Brown isn’t betting against him.
“I didn’t know if he was still going to be here after 2016, and here he is,” Brown said. “He’s still kicking. He’s lived a spectacular life and he’s still going. He’s still going strong.”
Jorge Castillo
Jorge Castillo covers the Dodgers for the Los Angeles Times.