OTSU, SHIGA PREF. ¨C Shortly after Kano Jigoro (1860-1938) founded judo as a martial art by consolidating disparate jujitsu techniques in the late 1800s, he accepted an agile practitioner named Saigo Shiro (1866-1922) as one of his first acolytes.
Decades later, legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910-98) based his first film, ¡°Sugata Sanshiro¡± (1943), on Saigo. It was the story of a rebellious young fighter determined to find glory in judo. Although 17 minutes of footage was cut by government censors, ¡°Sugata Sanshiro¡± (aka ¡°Judo Saga¡°) was remade five times.
Then, in 1998, along came Sanshiro, the son of Hidetoshi Murao and Deborah Grow, and brother to siblings Mashu and Maya.
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