Seattle Dojo has welcomed generations of families for more than a century

Tucked among downtown Seattle's growing condo-plexes and a nursing home, you'll find a little forgotten schoolhouse of a building. The front steps are rickety; the wooden double doors are heavy to the push; the springs under the floorboards are all original, from 1930s-era Model A Ford trucks.

It's not surprising that this International District building, home of Seattle Dojo, is also home to a wealth of history. The head of the dojo says it may be the oldest dojo outside of Japan. The legendary Jigoro Kano, who founded judo, visited the school twice. The names of the teachers, or senseis, of the past century line the walls of the dojo, written on scraps of paper, lettered in calligraphy.

What is surprising? At Seattle Dojo, not much has changed. To this day, it's a community center for families, focused on judo (the Japanese martial art is known as the "gentle way"). Two nights of the week, you can hear the sounds of the dojo flow into the neighborhood — yelling, mat slapping and laughter.

"It feels like family here," said Carol Chow, a one-time student at the dojo whose daughter, Cayla, now studies there. Chow ticks off on her fingers the many extended family and friends she would run into at Seattle Dojo.

"Everybody helps each other ... [and] I think everybody in the Japanese community has come here at least once."

There's a bounce in the boards

First established in the Seattle area in 1902, the Seattle Dojo originally held practices throughout basements of various Japantown hotels (now part of the ID). Named simply ("dojo" means "school"), it held its first competition in 1908.

The school's current building, at 1510 S. Washington St., was erected around 1934 and designed by Kichio Allen Arai. The trailblazing architect, who also designed the Seattle Buddhist Church, was the first Asian American in Seattle to lay out buildings under his own name.

The Seattle Dojo building was designed just for judo. With those Ford truck springs beneath the wood flooring, one falls with a bounce instead of a thud. It's an intimate space, but there's room for more than 30 inside to tumble, plus benches for the parents to watch from. During practice matches, players (or judoka) sit cross-legged on the mats, while two tussle inside the single red square.

There's a sense of camaraderie — besides bowing respectfully before and after a match, older and more experienced players let younger ones take them down. Meanwhile, players of equal capability scuffle until each runs out of breath.

Judo players pay $20 per month to practice at Seattle Dojo, a nonprofit where the senseis volunteer. Once, the cost was just $3 per month.

During World War II, the school closed, but judo enthusiasts didn't let the war stop them from practicing their sport. They packed the mats up and played at the internment camps. In those years, the Washington Street space served as a storage facility for interned families.

Just like Mom and Dad

Generations of students and teachers have passed through the dojo, including Bruce Lee, who learned grappling and throwing there.

So when it came time for 11-year-old Cayla Chow to choose her sport, her parents insisted on judo. They both trained at Seattle Dojo at her age.

Judo works well for youngsters because size and weight aren't as much of an issue as in other sports. Its scoring system is akin to wrestling. The idea is to throw an opponent off balance and pin him on the mat. Even someone small, like Cayla, can master throwing someone larger.

"What I like about judo is throwing people," said Cayla, with a big grin. "Also in judo you have to respect others. You get to see friends that are really nice to you."

Judo skills extend outside the dojo. "I like to be safe," Cayla went on. "My mom told me this story that she fell once and she did a judo roll and she was OK."

Her mom, Carol Chow, still remembers learning from Kenji Yamada, now the oldest sensei at the school; he's been teaching there since 1950.

"He was funny, pretty strict and very old-school," said Chow, a 54-year-old accountant who began studying at the dojo at Cayla's age. "At the time I was one of the first girls there."

Yamada, a former Boeing airplane sealer, started judo at the age of 13 and earned a second-degree black belt by high school. Now 84, he has an eighth-degree black belt (10th is the highest), and only last May did he retire from judo. Yamada is also a two-time national judo champion.

His son, Alan Yamada, a third-degree black belt, currently heads the dojo.

"I am still better than my son, though," quips the elder Yamada, who beat larger opponents, or "big dinosaurs," as he describes them, in competitions. Yamada at his prime weighed in at 135 pounds and was 5-feet-3 ½ inches tall.

Both Yamadas have their names on the calligraphy-lined walls of the dojo.

Dojo sprouts branches

Seattle Dojo has had its own children. Now there are several dojos in the Northwest that hold tournaments together — like the Budokan Judo Dojo (across the street from Seattle Dojo), Ippon Judo Dojo, Emerald City Dojo, Mercer Island Judo Dojo, the high-school judo program in the Kent schools, the University of Washington Judo Club, Bothell Judo Club, Snohomish Dojo, Zenyu Judo Dojo, NAS Whidbey Island Judo and Obukan Dojo in Portland. (For more about the high-school judo program in Kent, see the sidebar on this page.)

"A lot of my friends that grew up in Seattle went through Seattle Dojo," said Nathan Belo, a 40-year-old Seattle real-estate agent and blue belt. "And a lot of schools are headed by former students of Seattle Dojo — so I figured I would come to the source."

Students run the gamut in age and size, from the very small who barely make a patter when they fall (or ukemi), to those who shake the whole building.

Cayla's parents — Carol and Mark Chow — no longer study at the dojo, but they attend almost every practice, cheering their daughter on. In fact, on less-busy nights, you'll find the two 54-year-olds cleaning up the school, even sweeping.

"I like continuing because I want to do all the sports that my mom and dad used to do, because they're amazing parents and I love them so much. I just want to try out what they tried out a long time ago," said Cayla.

And so it goes at Seattle Dojo, a modest school with a rich inheritance of culture, community and sport. It just may last another hundred years.

Marian Liu: 206-464-3825 or mliu@seattletimes.com