It was not self-evident that Pierre de Coubertin should turn to Jigorō Kanō in 1909 to make him an IOC
member. At the time, he did not consider jiu-jitsu to be a sport and he knew very little about Kano's pedagogical and
sporting activities. What interested him most was his position as director of the Higher Normal School in Tokyo and the
fact that Japan had become a military power to be reckoned with in East Asia since its victory over Russia in 1905. At
the time, Coubertin was looking for support to spread Olympism far from Europe and block the YMCA's influence in Latin
America and Asia.Civilizational differences aside, the two men have very similar biographical backgrounds: aristocratic origins, an education
focused on political philosophy and the arts, the construction of their virility in the late discovery of bodily exercises,
a taste for travel, a keen interest in foreign societies, an early desire to influence their country's education system, a
conservative approach to modernity, the rejection of women from the field of bodily exercises.