Multidimensional judo deserves to be read as a public-health method — somatic and mental — yet global publishing tells another story. This 2017 review searched Web of Science (all databases) plus Japanese Academy of Budo outlets for titles containing judo/judoka/judoist (access 31 July 2017).
The map of 1264 records
Scientists from 70 countries appeared; top producers Brazil (140), Poland (118), Japan (86). Science technology (1058) and life science/biomedicine (1012) dominated; sports sciences ~916 papers, general internal medicine 193, physiology 183, rehabilitation 67. Psychiatry and mental-disorder therapy were occasional. Roughly 84% of works sat in those two broad science bins — sport orientation beating health promotion.
Agonology’s offer
Five detailed agonology theories (1938–2000, Polish books) and, since 2011, innovative agonology tools — mixed assessments, martial-arts bibliotherapy, modern health-related training — sit closer to Jigoro Kano’s welfare-and-efficiency ethos than medal-only science does. The paper argues judo’s therapeutic potential for people with mental disorders is real but constrained by cognitive/emotional limits that complicate “judo in mind”, and that public-health systems underuse that potential.
Reading without hype
This is argumentation from bibliometrics plus clinical experience — not a randomised cure claim. Use it to justify research and programme funding, then measure.
Inclusion of Japanese-language Research Journal of Budo abstracts mattered: English-only WoS under-counts the art’s home literature. Even with that, therapy of mental disorders remains a thin slice beside sports-science bulk.
Kano’s maximum-efficiency and mutual-welfare aim is the ethical north star the discussion returns to. Innovative agonology’s mixed assessments and bibliotherapy are offered as coherent with that aim, not as a rebrand of gladiatorial spectacle.
Public-health readers should leave with a funding argument: measure judo-based programmes for mental-health and fall-prevention endpoints instead of only podium counts.
Inclusion of Japanese-language Research Journal of Budo abstracts mattered: English-only WoS under-counts the art’s home literature. Even with that, therapy of mental disorders remains a thin slice beside sports-science bulk.
Kano’s maximum-efficiency and mutual-welfare aim is the ethical north star the discussion returns to. Innovative agonology’s mixed assessments and bibliotherapy are offered as coherent with that aim, not as a rebrand of gladiatorial spectacle.
Public-health readers should leave with a funding argument: measure judo-based programmes for mental-health and fall-prevention endpoints instead of only podium counts.
Where this sits in the lab
Biokineticum’s public notes exist so practitioners can reach the DOI without drowning in jargon — and so athletes, teachers and clinicians see that combat-sport science also publishes on prisons, faith, fair play, sauna physiology and disability policy. Soft topics still deserve hard methods: sample sizes, instruments, effect directions and explicit limits.
If you teach, treat or coach from these findings, copy the reference list into your syllabus, open the full text, and write down what you will measure next week. That is the only CTA that always fits.
Reading notes
Psychosocial and public-health papers describe associations in defined samples — not moral verdicts about individuals. We keep the language descriptive, avoid stigma, and point you to the DOI for methods and limits.
If the topic touches your clinic, classroom or programme design, treat this post as a map to the paper, not a substitute for it.
References
- Mosler D, Kalina RM. Possibilities and limitations of judo (selected martial arts) and innovative agonology in the therapy of people with mental disorders and also in widely understood public health prophylaxis. Archives of Budo. 2017. 13:211-226. Full text / abstract
Measurement-led biomechanics, health psychology and clinical tools at Biokineticum.
