E.J. Harrison - “A Pioneer Before There Were Pioneers”

                       

Ernest John ("E.J.") Harrison was an English journalist, author and judoka. Harrison was born in Manchester, England, on 22 August 1873. He wrote many books about the practice of judo. He died in London, on 23 April 1961.

As a young man, Harrison was a journalist who worked for newspapers in England, British Columbia, and Japan. He enjoyed wrestling. In 1897, while working for Yokohama newspaper called Japan Herald, he began training in Tenjin shinyo-ryujujutsu. After moving to Tokyo, he began training in Kodokan judo. In 1911, he was the first foreign-born person to achieve shodan (black belt ranking) in Kodokan judo. In 1912, his Fighting Arts of Japan was among the first English-language books to describe the Japanese martial arts from the perspective of a foreign-born practitioner of those arts.

Harrison was the original martial arts journalist before Donn Draeger or any of the rest of us. His book The Fighting Spirit of Old Japan is consider one of the earliest master pieces on Japanese martial arts.

After looking at the photo attached you can see he was also a stickler when it came to conditioning and training hard as well as his writing skills.

He was reportedly as well a good friend of Mark Twain in Twains later years and perhaps this is where he got the bug to be such an accomplished writer.

His most famous book is The Fighting Spirit of Old Japan. This is where we got the name for this Daily Magazine.