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順道制勝 jundō seishō Jundo Seisho

順道制勝 (jundō seishō), follow the Way and command victory, is Kanō Jigorō's own phrase, the founding teaching of Kōdōkan judo. It is in print under his name by 1913, and he glossed it himself in 1922. This study follows the condition it turns on, that a loss in keeping with the Way is worth more than a win against it.

Japanese Scroll of Jundo Seisho (jundō seishō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Jundo Seisho順道制勝jundō seishō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

順道制勝, jundō seishō, is Kanō Jigorō's own phrase, the founding teaching of Kōdōkan judo: victory comes from following the Way, and a loss in accordance with the Way is worth more than a win against it. It is in print under his name from 1913, a judo club's motto credited to him by 1916, put in his own words under his name in 1917, brushed in his own hand for dojos across Japan, and glossed by him in a 1922 article. One judo man attacked it in 1918 as moralizing a martial art does not need, and in 1939 and 1944 it was put to the war's uses. An eight-character form he sometimes brushed, 順道制勝行不害人, closes with in acting, harm no one.

Overview

The sense. The founding teaching of Kōdōkan judo: victory comes from following the Way, and a loss in accordance with the Way is worth more than a win against it.

The words. Two old words, joined new. 順道 is to follow the Way, 道に順う; the big dictionary has it from an eleventh-century letter-writing manual in the plain sense of the proper route, and its Chinese ground is the Book of Han, where the good emperors 承天順道, received Heaven and followed the Way [1]. 制勝 is to command victory, 勝を制す, the strategists' word: Sunzi says the enemy may know the shape by which I won, but not the shape by which I commanded victory, 莫知吾所以制勝之形, and that an army commands victory according to the enemy as water shapes its course to the ground; the Japanese dictionary first cites it from a 1660 book of wisdom, to fight a hundred times and win a hundred times [2]. Put together the four characters say follow the Way, command victory, and the join is the teaching: the second half is conditional on the first. 嘉納's readers in 1913 heard 順 as スナホ, pliant, straight, and called it judo's first principle: 順は柔道の第一原理である。柔道は順の道である. No Chinese text in the Kanseki Repository, Chinese Wikisource or the CBETA Buddhist canon has the four together; this is a Japanese sentence of the 1890s or 1900s made from a moralist's word and a strategist's [1].

The text in English. The English is recent and the house already has the two renderings that count.

The historical record

嘉納治五郎, and the first print, 1913. The phrase is the founder's, and the earliest known book says so. 宗像逸郎's Judo (1913): 嘉納師範は身心自在と說かれる。又順道制勝とも說かれる … 道に順ふて勝を制すと云ふは、身體精神共に道に順ふて目的を達するの意味である、勝を制するは單に身體的に對手に勝つの意味のみにあらずして己れに克ち困難に打ち勝つの意味である。順道制勝と云ひ身心自在と云ふは皆柔道の要訣である — Master Kanō teaches body and mind at ease and also 順道制勝; to follow the Way and command victory means to reach one's aim, in body and mind alike, by following the Way; and to command victory is not only to beat an opponent bodily but to conquer oneself and overcome difficulty; these two are the whole secret of judo [3]. The page prints the two halves with return marks, 順レ道制レ勝, so the reader takes them as 道に順ひ勝を制す. The same book, later: 柔道は道に順ひて勝を制する道である, judo is the way of commanding victory by following the Way [3].

A club's motto, 1916. The Nara Prefectural Normal School's book of 1916 gives each club of its alumni association a four-character spirit, chosen by the school itself for the time being, 今試ニ左ノ數句ヲ選ンデ姑ク其ノ目標ニ擬ス: 總務部 周約理平, 雜誌 浩氣習文, 談話部 習言緝熙, 圖書部 擇善博覧, 劍道部 正氣制先, 柔道部 順道制勝, 野球部 攻守全局, 蹴球部 進退守地, 庭球部 强弱時中. One line carries a credit, set in the judo club's row under its motto: 嘉納東京高等師範學校長選句, phrase chosen by Kanō, principal of the Tokyo Higher Normal School, a post he held in three terms between 1893 and 1920 [4]. The school's 1940 history prints the list again with the credit in the same place [4]. A school judo textbook of 1920 makes it the teaching itself: 柔道に於ては、順道制勝を以て敎へとし、苟も、無謀に敵に向ひ、無益に精力を費やし、無理に相手を制せんとすることを戒め — in judo the teaching is 順道制勝, which forbids reckless attack, wasted strength and forcing the opponent [5].

1916 to 1943. On the wall, in his hand. The phrase was 嘉納's favorite thing to brush for a dojo. A writer in a judo magazine said so in 1926: 嘉納先生はよく方々の道場に、順道制勝の四字を書いて與へられてをる, Master Kanō often writes the four characters 順道制勝 for dojos everywhere [6]. The magazines name them as they went up: a dojo whose plaque, brushed by Kanō of the Kōdōkan, reads 順道制勝, in the Ueda association's monthly of 1916; a school's new hall of seventy-seven mats with 嘉納先生筆の「順道制勝」の額 in 1917; a school that asked him for a great plaque four shaku by two and a half ken in 1921; and a middle school's martial-arts hall where, a 1943 memorial book recalls, a former pupil had gone to his house to ask for one [7]. Three pre-war school histories say where his brushwork hung. A private school in Ibaraki: 又其柔道室扁額『順道制勝』の如きは嘉納治五郞氏來館の時揮灑せられしものなりと云ふ, the judo room's plaque was brushed by Mr Kanō when he visited [8]. The Hiroshima Normal School hung a collotype print of his 順道制勝 among its plaques, commissioned through its old kendo master [9]. The Fifth Higher School in Kumamoto, where 嘉納 was principal from 1891 to 1893, records in its 1939 history that 勝海舟's plaque hangs before the kendo section of the dojo, facing 柔道部の正面にある嘉納校長の「順道制勝」の額面, Principal Kanō's 順道制勝 plaque before the judo section [10]. The plaque now shown in the school's memorial hall carries the eight-character form and is signed 甲南 [11], the art name Kanō used until about the age of sixty, so it was brushed before about 1920 [12]. A writer in the Kōdōkan's magazine at the 1965 unveiling of its copy in stone, and another in 1987, called it the work of his years as the young principal, which would put the phrase in the early 1890s; no witness of those years has been found, and the 1939 leaf does not date it. A newspaper essay of February 1931 by the writer 長田秀雄 was titled 「順道制勝」の額, the 順道制勝 plaque [13].

In his own words, 1917 and 1922. In March 1917 a women's magazine printed an article under his name and titles, 東京高等師範學校長講道館々長嘉納治五郞, Judo suits women and children too, which defines judo in the phrase's own words: 要するに柔道は道に順つて勝を制し、身心の力を最も有効に使用する道である, in short, judo is the way of commanding victory by following the Way, and of using the power of body and mind most effectively [14]. In February 1922, in the judo society's magazine, under the title 講道館柔道の文化的精神の發揮, he glossed it: 勝つにしても道に順つて勝ち、負けるにしても道に順つて負けなければならぬ。負けても道に順つて負ければ、道に背いて勝つたより価値があるのである — if you win, win by following the Way; if you lose, lose by following the Way; a loss in accordance with the Way is worth more than a win against it [15]. The Kōdōkan quotes the passage on its page for the phrase, in modern spelling, and a 2026 study of Kanō's principles cites it at its page, p. 5 [15].

1918 and 1919. The one dissent. In December 1918 the Kōdōkan fourth dan 小田常胤 argued in 中央公論 that judo's one aim is to win, and that the 1913 book, ruled by moral feeling, harps on 順道, which a martial art does not need: 宗像五段の著「柔道」の如きは教育家の弊なる總てを徒らに道德的感情に支配された結果、諄々として武術として必要なき順道を云々し [16]. In the same magazine in March 1919 another fourth dan, 櫻庭武, answered him, summing up the charge as 順道制勝を武術に必要なきものと云ふ, he calls 順道制勝 unneeded in a martial art, and replied that a judo of winning alone, without morality, would have no reason to exist [16]. Oda answered again in July.

The plain Japanese, 1930 to 1939. A youth-association handbook of 1930 explains a throw's set-up as 道に順つて勝を制する所以, the reason one commands victory by following the Way; a 1937 company dojo's creed lists 道に順ひて勝を制するの術を學び among 武道の要諦, the essentials of the martial way, and a 1939 judo manual repeats it and adds that 道に順つて勝を制するのが最も立派な勝ち方で … 苟も卑怯未練な手段を弄することを許さぬ, winning by following the Way is the finest way to win; no cowardly or unworthy means are allowed [17]. A Niigata teacher who coached a middle school to national judo titles in the 1930s is remembered for making 嘉納治五郎の訓えである「順道制勝」 his creed, victory through the accumulation of rational training [18].

1939 and 1944. The war. The phrase was carried into the war's language. A student delegation's report of 1939 says the China Incident drove out the devil 正義の順道制勝の鐵則の如く, like the iron law of righteous 順道制勝; and a 1944 handbook on wartime labor management, on the workers' martial arts, cites it as 嘉納先生の金言, Master Kanō's golden saying, that one should stand apart from winning and losing and yet command victory [19].

1965 and 2013. The longer form. On some of his calligraphy 嘉納 added four more characters. Kumamoto University's page on the 1965 monument to him reads: 第三代校長嘉納治五郎が揮毫した書の転刻。原本は五高記念館に展示されている。『順道制勝行不害人』（道にしたがえば勝を制し行いて人を害なわず）は自らが創始した講道館柔道の極意を表している — a carving of the calligraphy of the third principal, Kanō Jigorō, whose original is displayed in the Fifth Higher School memorial hall; 順道制勝行不害人, "follow the Way and command victory; in acting, harm no one," expresses the innermost teaching of the Kōdōkan judo he founded [11]. John Stevens (2013) calls it a second verse that Kano added on occasion, rendering it The Best Behavior Harms No One [12]. The plaque the stone copies is signed 甲南 and so is older than about 1920 (above). In the National Diet Library's full-text index the four characters stand in forty catalogued items from 1913 to 1944, and the eight first reach print there in 1965; but the businessman 朝倉毎人 records in his diary for June 1939 that he brushed 順道制勝行不害人 on a scroll for a training institute's kendo hall, so the longer form was known before the war [20].

2000 to the present, in Japan. Not in the general dictionaries, not in the standard Japanese-English dictionary, and not on the Japanese Wikipedia's pages for 嘉納, the Kōdōkan or judo, though a television drama, いだてん, had 嘉納's character carry it as his motto. A high-school judo club, the 新商高柔道会, titled its 2000 club history 順道制勝. The Kōdōkan keeps it among the Words of Kanō Shihan on its site [21].

The sense across time. One sense, held steady by its author and his readers for a century: winning is subordinate to the Way, and the Way means the rational, unforced, undamaging use of body and mind. 1913 adds that the victory is over oneself as much as an opponent; 1920 spells out what following the Way forbids; 1922, in 嘉納's words, ranks a loss on the Way above a win off it; the eight-character form adds that the winner harms no one. The one recorded objection, 1918, was to the moral reading itself, and the war's uses of 1939 and 1944 kept the words and made the Way the nation's.

What is not a source. Not a Chinese classic, though both halves are classical: 順道 is the Book of Han's, 制勝 is Sunzi's, and the four together are 嘉納's. Not the Kōdōkan's better-known pair 精力善用 · 自他共栄, which are separate maxims of his with their own histories. Not Confucius on judo: Stevens's Confucian concept describes the word 順道, not a source for the phrase.

The phrase in English

2000, Kawamura Teizō 川村禎三 and Daigo Toshirō 醍醐敏郎, with Derek Steel, Kōdōkan New Japanese-English Dictionary of Judo. jundō seisho ("Victory by following the true path") A phrase first mentioned by Jigoro … [22].

2013, John Stevens, The Way of Judo: A Portrait of Jigoro Kano and His Students. Following the Way Produces Victory, with a list his student Shiotani Muneo compiled of Kanō's framed calligraphy in dojos and schools across Japan, in which 順道制勝 came first with eighty-one examples, by far the most common calligraphy on display, and 精力善用 second with sixty-six [12].

Today. The Kōdōkan's Japanese page on the phrase gives Accordance with the Way Overcomes Winning as its English [15], and its English list of the Words of Kanō Shihan the same [21]; the English page it once had for the phrase no longer answers [23]. No English rendering older than the 2000 dictionary was found in the Internet Archive's full-text index. The closer gloss is Follow the Way and command victory, keeping 制勝's force, which produces and overcomes soften.

A reading

順道制勝 is 嘉納治五郎's own sentence, made from a moralist's word and a strategist's, in print under his name by 1913, credited to him as a judo club's spirit by 1916, put in his own words in 1917, brushed by him for dojos across the country, and glossed by him in 1922: a loss in accordance with the Way is worth more than a win against it. It is a phrase with a named author, which few such phrases have. The Japanese order is 道に順って勝を制す, and the eight-character form adds and in acting, harm no one.

References

  1. 「順道」・「制勝」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉・字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/順道
  2. 孫子, 虛實 and 地形, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/孫子兵法
  3. 宗像逸郎, 柔道, 1913, p. 140, scan 82 (and scan 116). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/936789/1/82
  4. 奈良県師範学校, 1916, p. 162, scan 87 (校友會各部精神, the credit in the judo club's row); 奈良県師範学校五十年史, 1940, scan 311. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/909824/1/87 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1453118/1/311
  5. 松岡辰三郎, 学校柔道, 1920, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/939760/1/27
  6. 作興, February 1926, National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2254433
  7. 上田郷友會月報, 1916; 柔道, March 1917; 有効の活動, April 1921; 陸軍大尉新穂幹雄君追悼録, 1943; National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13342216 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2244143 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2207699 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1102781
  8. 茨城人名辞書, 1930, scan 356. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1187062/1/356
  9. 広島県師範学校, 六十年回顧録, 1935, scan 298. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1035991/1/298
  10. 五高五十年史, 1939, scan 237. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1462179/1/237
  11. Kumamoto University, 嘉納治五郎先生の碑 (the campus monuments page, item 09; the stone 1965); the plaque as the judo hall's in 松本雅明著作集, 1987, and its 甲南 signature in 文芸春秋, January 1985, and 旧制高校の跡を訪ねて, 1987; the 1965 and 1987 attributions to his principal years in 柔道, October 1965 and April 1987; the index text. https://museum.kumamoto-u.ac.jp/facility/ · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12408924 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3198484 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13329234 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6073382 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6073640
  12. John Stevens, The Way of Judo: A Portrait of Jigoro Kano and His Students, Shambhala, 2013, the chapter on Kanō's calligraphy (his art names, and Shiotani Muneo's frequency list).
  13. 長田秀雄, 「順道制勝」の額, in 文芸年鑑, 1931, scan 52. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1077758/1/52
  14. 嘉納治五郎, 「柔道は婦人にも子供にも適す」, 婦人之友, March 1917, National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text (open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3562386
  15. 嘉納治五郎, 「講道館柔道の文化的精神の發揮」, 有効の活動 8(2), February 1922, National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text (open in Japan only); quoted in modern spelling at the Kōdōkan Judo Institute's page, with its English; and at p. 5 in 真田久, 佐野淳, 西嶋尚彦, 堀川峻, 「スポーツ道の系譜」, 環太平洋大学研究紀要 28, 2026, pp. 23–32. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2207708 · https://kdkjudo.org/順道制勝とは/ · https://ipu.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/2000157
  16. 小田常胤, 「柔道改革私見」, 中央公論, December 1918; 櫻庭武, 「小田常胤氏の柔道改革私見を読む」, 中央公論, March 1919; National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text (open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10232041 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10232044
  17. 東京市聯合青年団, 青年団施設要綱, 1930; 三菱重工業, 労務管理資料, 1937; 柔道教育研究会, 柔道上達法, 1939, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1130476 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1462963 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1055778
  18. 高橋秀山, at ja.wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/高橋秀山
  19. 学徒至誠会派遣団報告, 1939; 日下部朝太郎, 決戦下の勤労管理, 1944; National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1215921 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1058467
  20. 朝倉毎人日記, vol. 3 (近代日本史料選書 9-3), Yamakawa, 1989, the 1939 entries, National Diet Library Digital Collections, the index text. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12256076
  21. Kōdōkan Judo Institute, Words of Kanō Shihan, at kdkjd.org. https://kdkjd.org/words-of-kano-shihan/
  22. 川村禎三, 醍醐敏郎 and Derek Steel, 和英対照柔道用語小辞典 (Kōdōkan New Japanese-English Dictionary of Judo), Kōdōkan, 2000, at Internet Archive (kodokan-new-japanese-english-dictionary-of-judo-etc.).
  23. Kōdōkan Judo Institute, English site, kdkjudo.org/en/doctrine/word/jundo-seisho/ (404 on 7 September and 1 October 2026; the older kodokanjudoinstitute.org address also 404 on 1 October).

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every claim tested at its address; many resolve; nothing found to differ; the rest not openable; the 1922 Kano article is the account's own stated null

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 順道制勝 (jundō seishō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/jundo-seisho.