"The Foundations of Judo is the first ever English translation of Yves Klein''s Judo Manual originally published in 1954 in French. In the early 1950s the 24-year-old Yves Klein spent a year and a half in Tokyo, studying mainly at the Kodokan under the ninth-dan judo master Oda. After becoming one of the first Europeans to receive a coveted fourth-dan black belt, Klein returned to France and opened the Judo Academie de Paris. Translated and typeset in a facsimile of the 1954 original by British artist Ian Whittlesea." --publisher''s statement.