# Masahiko Kimura

> The greatest judoka of the Showa era — undefeated from 1936 to 1950, three-time All-Japan champion, and the man who broke Hélio Gracie’s arm and gave Brazilian jiu-jitsu its most famous submission.

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- **Last updated:** 2026-07-19

## Identity

- **Name:** Masahiko Kimura
- **Full name:** Masahiko Kimura (木村 政彦)
- **Nickname:** The Man Who Defeated Hélio Gracie
- **Belt:** black belt
- **Team:** Takushoku University / Kodokan
- **Nationality:** Japan
- **Occupation:** Judoka, police instructor, and professional wrestler
- **Born:** September 10, 1917
- **Died:** April 18, 1993
- **Birthplace:** Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan
- **Weight class:** Openweight (~84 kg / 185 lb)
- **Height:** 5'7" (170 cm)

## Biography

Before the Kimura lock had a name in every academy on Earth, there was a boy from Kumamoto who trained until trees shook and opponents begged him not to reap their legs. Masahiko Kimura stood roughly 170 cm and 84 kg — not a giant by openweight standards — and yet he became the first man to win the All-Japan Judo Championships three years in a row. From 1936 to 1950 he did not lose a judo match.

In October 1951, before twenty thousand people at Rio’s Maracanã Stadium — including the president of Brazil — he faced Hélio Gracie under rules that erased throws and pins as paths to victory. Kimura threw, pinned, tested the ground game, and finished with gyaku ude-garami. Gracie’s corner threw the towel. The armlock kept Kimura’s name forever.

This is the story of San Bai no Chikara — triple effort — of midnight uchi-komi against living wood, of Kodokan corridors that went quiet when he entered, of a coffin carried into the Maracanã for a man who refused to die on foreign mats, and of a technique that outlived its maker in every gym that still whispers: finish the Kimura.

## The Story

### I. The Boy from Kumamoto

![Young Masahiko Kimura practicing osoto-gari against a tree at midnight in 1930s Japan](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/tree-training.jpg)

*Midnight uchi-komi against living wood — the religion of San Bai no Chikara.*

Masahiko Kimura was born on September 10, 1917, in Kumamoto Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu — hot summers, hard country, a Japan still climbing into the modern age. He began judo around age nine or ten. By fifteen he was already yondan, fourth dan, having defeated six consecutive opponents of third- and fourth-dan rank. The provinces had produced something the capital would have to reckon with.

In 1935, at eighteen, he became the youngest godan in Kodokan history by beating eight men in a row at judo’s headquarters. That same year he took the All-Japan Collegiate Championships for Takushoku University. Then the year turned cruel: he lost four matches — the only competitive losses of his life. Friends found him ready to quit. Instead he rebuilt himself under a doctrine he would later call San Bai no Chikara, triple effort: if others trained once, he would train three times as hard.

He practiced osoto-gari against trees at midnight until the sound woke neighbors. Push-ups climbed from three hundred a day in high school to five hundred at university to a thousand without rest after his first great titles. Four sessions a day — Takushoku, local clubs, the Kodokan, police academies — became ordinary. Many opponents asked him not to use his osoto-gari. Randori partners at the Tokyo Police and Kodokan dojos sometimes left with concussions. The boy from Kumamoto was no longer asking permission to be great.

### II. Under Ushijima’s Shadow

Much of Kimura’s ferocity was forged under Tatsukuma Ushijima — a teacher who managed his student’s regimen with fanatical precision. Ushijima understood that openweight judo rewarded not only skill but a body and will that never arrived tired. Kimura answered that demand as if it were a spiritual vow.

He also sought power outside judo’s walls. For two years he trained Shotokan karate under Gichin Funakoshi, then moved to Goju-ryu under So Nei Chu, a pupil of Chojun Miyagi. At that dojo he became an assistant instructor alongside Gogen Yamaguchi and Masutatsu Oyama — the future Kyokushin founder, also a Takushoku man, and a friend who shared the makiwara. Kimura later credited daily board striking, taught by So Nei Chu and Oyama, as a decisive edge before his All-Japan reign. Hands that could hit wood without flinching gripped collars differently.

Takushoku University — empire-minded, overseas-facing, tough — gave him a stage and a tribe. Gozo Shioda of aikido would later sit in the same university orbit. Kimura’s world was not a single art in a glass case. It was a generation of Japanese fighters who believed the body could be remade by will.

### III. Three Crowns of the All-Japan

![Masahiko Kimura winning an All-Japan Judo Championship final in the late 1930s](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/all-japan.jpg)

*1937–1939 — the first three-peat in All-Japan history, and a championship flag no one else would ever keep.*

In October 1937 Kimura entered the All-Japan Judo Championships — openweight, the purest Japanese proving ground. In the semifinals he ended a man with osoto-gari in seconds. In the final against two-time champion Nakashima, a scheduled forty-minute war, he scored seoi-nage for waza-ari, survived a left uchi-mata counter that leveled the middle period, and in the last stretch pinned Nakashima with kuzure-kami-shiho-gatame for thirty seconds. At twenty he was All-Japan champion.

In 1938 he tore through the draw. Against Tashiro — famous for kani-basami, the scissors takedown later banned for breaking legs — Kimura’s osoto-gari was so violent Tashiro injured a shoulder and could not continue. In the final he pinned Ogawa for ippon. In 1939 he warned finalist Tokizane, himself an osoto-gari specialist, that the reap was coming. Tokizane stood defensive. Kimura found him anyway with osoto-gari and osoto-otoshi. Three straight All-Japan titles. History’s first three-peat. He was awarded the championship flag — and became the only man ever to keep it.

The Kodokan world took note. Daily life for his peers became a weather report: if Kimura was in the building, randori changed temperature. Writer Tsuneo Tomita, son of Kodokan Heavenly King Tsunejiro Tomita, would later seal the reputation in a sentence that outlived both men: Kimura no mae ni Kimura naku, Kimura no ato ni Kimura nashi — there was no Kimura before Kimura, and no Kimura after.

### IV. Before the Emperor, Through the War

In 1940 came the Ten-Ran Shiai — a special tournament held in the presence of Japan’s emperor. Kimura won early matches with ushiro-goshi and osoto-gari, broke Hirosei in the semifinals after five failed reaps finally landed when the man tired, and in the final destroyed future champion Ishikawa with ippon-seoi-nage in forty-two seconds. The night before that final he could not sleep, turning over osoto-gari and sasae-tsuri-komi-ashi in his mind like prayer beads. Speed was the answer he chose.

War swallowed the decade. Championships thinned; the country’s young men were elsewhere. Kimura’s competitive fire did not. In 1947 at the West Japan Championship he faced Yoshihiko Yoshimatsu — 180 cm, 115 kg, a future three-time All-Japan champion who would later throw Anton Geesink in forty-five seconds at the first World Championships. Kimura took him with osoto-gari and ippon-seoi-nage for waza-ari scores. Size was an argument. Kimura was a verdict.

He was promoted to seventh dan around age twenty-nine or thirty — extraordinarily young for the red-and-white corridor of judo’s upper ranks. That rank would later freeze in politics: professional wrestling, the kept championship flag, dan ranks issued while teaching in Brazil. The Kodokan and the fighter who had been its sharpest blade began to drift apart. The blade did not get duller.

### V. The Last All-Japan and the Road to Brazil

In 1948 the All-Japan crown went to Yasuichi Matsumoto. Kimura was not invited — punishment for refusing to return the championship flag. On other mats the next generation rose: Yoshimi Osawa, the great technician, threw Matsumoto with ura-nage at a national athletic meet. The postwar judo map was being redrawn without its old monarch on every invitation list.

Kimura returned for the 1949 All-Japan at thirty-two — his last. He won early with ude-garami, pinned Osawa with kuzure-kami-shiho-gatame, took a semifinal decision off ippon-seoi-nage, and in the final against rival Takahiko Ishikawa attacked for three overtimes without either man scoring waza-ari. Referee Kyuzo Mifune, tenth dan, declared them co-champions. It was a draw on paper and a coronation in memory: even shared, the title still bent around Kimura’s gravity.

By 1950 he had stepped from pure amateur judo into professional judo and wrestling — in part, biographers note, because his wife’s tuberculosis treatment demanded money a police instructor’s salary could not guarantee. After Hawaii, he and a troupe — sixth-dan Toshio Yamaguchi and fifth-dan Yukio Kato — accepted an invitation from the São Paulo Shimbun, urged on by Brazil-based judoka Takeo Yano, who had long wanted another crack at the Gracie brothers. The Brazilian press crowned Kimura “world jiu-jitsu champion” before he had thrown a punch of challenge. The Gracies heard the insult. History cleared its throat.

### VI. The Night the Maracanã Learned a New Name

![Masahiko Kimura applying gyaku ude-garami to Hélio Gracie at Maracanã Stadium, 1951](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/maracana.jpg)

*October 23, 1951, Maracanã — gyaku ude-garami becomes the Kimura.*

The opening act belonged to Kato. On September 6, 1951, at the Maracanã, he and Hélio Gracie fought to a time-limit draw under rules that ignored throws and pins — only submission or unconsciousness counted. In the rematch at São Paulo’s Ibirapuera on September 29, Kato dominated early, even throwing Hélio from the ring, then tangled in the ropes pursuing a juji-jime. Hélio locked his own choke while Kato waited for a rope break that never came. Kato went out. Kimura threw in the towel. Gracie students paraded a coffin through the streets. Japanese prestige in Brazil felt the wound.

Hélio challenged Yamaguchi next. Kimura volunteered instead. October 23, Maracanã again: twenty thousand voices, President Getúlio Vargas and Vice President Café Filho at ringside, writer Michiharu Mishima among the witnesses. Gracie loyalists brought another coffin. The crowd met Kimura with raw eggs and abuse. Georges Mehdi later recalled that the Japanese embassy warned Kimura he would not be welcomed home if he lost. Three days before the bout a paper even claimed he was not truly Japanese; he produced his passport at the embassy and forced a correction.

Round one: Hélio reached for osoto-gari and kouchi-gari; Kimura stuffed them and answered with ouchi-gari, harai-goshi, uchi-mata, ippon-seoi-nage. Soft mats robbed the throws of knockout power. Kimura pinned through kuzure-kami-shiho-gatame, yoko-shiho-gatame, sankaku variations, kesa-gatame. At one point Hélio lost consciousness without Kimura noticing, waking when the hold released; blood ran from an ear. Between rounds Kimura told cornerman Hikaru Kurachi he had been punishing for the crowd and testing the ground — and that the next round would end it. Round two: after stuffing a tomoe-nage, Kimura reaped Hélio down with osoto-gari, settled into kuzure-kami-shiho-gatame for nearly three minutes, then shifted weight over the head. Hélio pushed with an arm to breathe. Kimura took the limb for gyaku ude-garami. Hélio would not tap. The arm broke. Still no tap. Kimura twisted again. On the third turn Carlos Gracie threw the towel and tapped Kimura’s back. Japanese fans lifted Kimura into the air. Doctors took Hélio’s arm. The newspapers called it both an easy victory and thirteen minutes of intense emotion. Kimura praised the fighting spirit and criticized the defensive judo. The armlock — soon Kimuriana, then simply the Kimura — entered the permanent vocabulary of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and, later, MMA.

### VII. The Wrestler’s Road

Back in Japan, Kimura founded the Kokusai Pro Wrestling Association and entered the orbit of Rikidōzan’s Japan Pro Wrestling Association. Tag partners and opponents, they helped ignite the first great puroresu boom — including the 1954 series against Canada’s Sharpe Brothers that put wrestling on the national map. Kimura was never marketed as Rikidōzan was. In their heavyweight title match, Kimura later wrote, a planned draw became a shoot: a choreographed chest chop became a full-force strike to the neck; he went unconscious; kicks followed on the floor; rematches never came.

He built the International Pro Wrestling Force in his Kumamoto hometown — remembered as the first Japanese promotion to bring in Mexican lucha libre talent — even as JWA later absorbed operations. In 1959 he returned to Brazil for a final wrestling tour and accepted a real challenge from Waldemar Santana, the 27-year-old jiu-jitsu and capoeira champion managed by Carlson Gracie who had already knocked Hélio out in a fight lasting more than three hours. Santana was taller and some forty pounds heavier. In the gi match at Maracanãzinho on July 1, newspapers described a cat-and-mouse affair Kimura won at will — seoi-nage, hane-goshi, osoto-gari, and again the famous gyaku ude-garami.

The vale tudo rematch on July 12 was uglier. Kimura was ill; promoters, he claimed, threatened police pressure to force him into the cage of public expectation against doctor’s orders. Santana’s kicks and open hands cut him up; Kimura answered with headbutts, elbows, a broken nose from bottom position, and mutual exhaustion. The clock ended what neither man finished. It was not the clean myth of 1951. It was the cost of a body that had already given judo everything.

### VIII. The Lock That Outlived the Man

![Masahiko Kimura in later years reflecting in a traditional Japanese dojo](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/legacy.jpg)

*The rank froze. The reputation did not. The name became a technique.*

Kimura died in Tokyo on April 18, 1993, after a long fight with lung cancer. He was seventy-five. Seventh dan remained the number on the formal ledger; the disputes with the Kodokan had frozen him there. Informal measure was simpler. Toshiro Daigo remembered being thrown with osoto-gari and pinned. Yoshimi Osawa remembered being tossed off the mats onto hardwood in practice. Jim Chen, writing from judo’s documentary tradition, called him the greatest judoka who ever lived. The sentence from Tomita still circulates wherever Japanese sports memory keeps its saints.

In academies from Rio to Tokyo to the American plains, coaches still say “Kimura” and mean a reverse ude-garami — shoulder locked, wrist controlled, the shoulder joint the fulcrum — finished from side control, north-south, half guard, or the bottom of closed guard. PRIDE once staged Yoshida versus Royce Gracie as a spiritual rematch of judo and Gracie jiu-jitsu. Every modern grappler who hunts that far shoulder is speaking Kimura’s name whether they know the Maracanã story or not.

He was not the founder of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That seed belongs to another Japanese traveler, Mitsuyo Maeda, and to the Gracie household that transformed it. Kimura’s role in the saga is different and just as permanent: he was the storm that proved the art’s courage and judo’s teeth in the same night — the visitor who broke an arm and left a vocabulary. Before him, gyaku ude-garami was a Kodokan lock. After him, it was a legend you could teach in a single word. Masahiko Kimura. The man before whom there was no Kimura — and after whom every mat still says the name.

## Gallery

![Young Kimura training osoto-gari against a tree at night](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/tree-training.jpg)
*Kumamoto steel — midnight uchi-komi and San Bai no Chikara.*

![Kimura at the All-Japan Judo Championships](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/all-japan.jpg)
*1937–1939 — three straight All-Japan crowns.*

![Kimura vs Hélio Gracie at the Maracanã](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/maracana.jpg)
*1951, Maracanã — the night the Kimura was born.*

![Kimura in later years](https://ossmeta.com/athletes/masahiko-kimura/legacy.jpg)
*The lock kept the name after the man was gone.*

## Lineage

Kodokan judo under Tatsukuma Ushijima > Masahiko Kimura

## Instructors

- Tatsukuma Ushijima
- Gichin Funakoshi (karate)
- So Nei Chu (Goju-ryu)

## Signature techniques / game

- Osoto-gari (large outer reap) — his signature throw
- Ippon-seoi-nage
- Harai-goshi / uchi-mata
- Kuzure-kami-shiho-gatame and kesa-gatame pinning sequences
- Gyaku ude-garami (Kimura lock)
- Ude-garami and transitional newaza pressure

## Major achievements

- Widely regarded among the greatest judoka in history — “no Kimura before, no Kimura after”
- All-Japan Judo Champion (1937, 1938, 1939) — first three-peat in tournament history
- Only person ever awarded and retained the All-Japan Championship flag
- Undefeated in judo competition from 1936 to 1950 (only four career losses, all in 1935)
- Youngest Kodokan godan (5th dan) at age 18 after defeating eight consecutive opponents (1935)
- All-Japan Collegiate Champion (1935); Takudai Kosen Judo Champion (1936)
- Ten-Ran Shiai tournament winner before the Emperor of Japan (1940)
- West Japan Judo Champion (1947); All-Japan co-champion with Takahiko Ishikawa (1949)
- Defeated Hélio Gracie by gyaku ude-garami (technical submission) at Maracanã Stadium, October 23, 1951
- Namesake of the Kimura lock (reverse ude-garami) in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA
- Kodokan 7th dan (rank later frozen amid disputes over pro wrestling and related matters)
- Pioneer Japanese professional wrestler; founded Kokusai Pro Wrestling Association and IPWF (Kumamoto)
- 1959 Brazil return: defeated Waldemar Santana under grappling rules; vale tudo rematch went the distance

## Sources

- [Wikipedia — Masahiko Kimura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiko_Kimura)
- [Wikipedia — Masahiko Kimura vs. Hélio Gracie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiko_Kimura_vs._H%C3%A9lio_Gracie)
- [Judo Info — Masahiko Kimura Bio (Chen & Chen)](https://judoinfo.com/kimura/)
- [Judo Info — Excerpt from My Judo (Kimura, 1984)](https://judoinfo.com/kimura2/)
- [Bloody Elbow — Gods of War: Masahiko Kimura](https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/9/25/3350134/gods-of-war-masahiko-kimura-UFC-history-Helio-Gracie-judo-mma-history)
- [BJJEE — My Judo by Masahiko Kimura (Part 2)](https://www.bjjee.com/articles/my-judo-by-masahiko-kimura-his-story-vision-in-his-own-words-part-2/)

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