Sarah Mayer in her judo clothing, 1934
Sarah Mayer (born October 16, 1896 in London, England, † March 19, 1957 in Barton-under-Needwood, England) was a British actress and judoka. She was the first non-Japanese woman to receive a black belt in Kodokan judo in 1935.[1][2]
Mayer was the only daughter and the eldest of three children of the actor couple Alfred Benedict Tapping and Alice Amelia Fishwick. Her parents ran a touring theater company and in 1906 she appeared in two of her parents’ productions. In 1914 she made her first stage appearance in a West End theater as a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. During the First World War she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
On January 29, 1919, she married Sills Keith Gibbons, a lumber merchant. After the marriage collapsed, she followed her father’s example and founded her own theater group. This company lasted for several years, during which she worked as a playwright, producer and performer. In 1922 she met the lawyer Robert John (Robin) Mayer, the son of the diamond dealer Max Mayer, and married him after their divorce on July 17, 1924.
Mayer began learning judo at Budokwai, founded in 1918 by Gunji Koizumi. She became a member of this oldest Japanese martial arts club in Europe and took a stake in the company.
At the end of December 1933 she traveled on an Ellerman Lines liner from Liverpool first to India, then through China and Tibet in order to arrive in Japan in time for the cherry blossom season. Shortly after her arrival, she attended the Butokukai (Martial Virtues Society) in Kobe and was invited to train daily with the local police under the tutelage of Masanobu Yamamoto. Her interest in judo caught the attention of the Japanese press and newspaper reports often mentioned her blonde hair. Although a few women practiced judo in Japan, they did not train with male athletes.
Mayer visited Kyoto, where she first met the professor at the Butokukai there, Hajime Isogai. He encouraged her to continue her education. She then traveled to Tokyo at the invitation of Ichiro Hatta, a member of Jigorō Kanō’s inner circle. After meeting Kanō and being advised by him about a training program, she was allowed to practice with the men in the main dōjō, unprecedented for a woman at the time, and she attended the men’s Kangeiko sessions in the winter season of 1935. She also had the honor of being taught in the Kōdōkan by masters such as Mifune Kyuzo and Nagaoka Shuichi, as well as his partner Samura Kaichiro, as part of the demonstrations for the 50th anniversary celebrations. She was the only Western participant at the event and was featured in Japanese and English-language magazines worldwide. Before she left Japan, she was awarded a first kyū by the Kōdōkan, one step above black belt or dan degree. On the return journey to Kyoto she was awarded the 1st Dan by Isogai at Butokukai, which was presented to her by Prince Nashimoto.[3]
When Mayer returned to Britain in 1935, she divorced for the second time. Hatta had followed her to Great Britain with the future Japanese team to train for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In the summer, Mayer accompanied Hatta on a judo tour through Europe, where she was filmed for an Austrian newsreel.
Mayer worked as an actress and director until the end of the 1930s. She worked with director Leon M. Lion and co-produced works for the West End theater. In late 1939 she met George Bernard Shaw at his London apartment when Lion hoped to use Shaw’s play The Millionairess. Fascinated by Mayer’s stories about Japan, Shaw changed the script and the main character, Epiphania, became a judo artist. He sent Lion a postcard saying She’s a Millionaire and agreed that he could produce the play with Mayer in the lead role.
In the late 1930s, Mayer also wrote articles for the press, and during the Second World War she was employed at a factory in northeast England, where she became head of the entertainment department.
After the war, she married former RAF flying officer Warwick Parker Ovington (1898–1979) in 1951. She died in Barton-under-Needwood in 1957, aged 60.
- M. Callan, A. Spenn: Sarah Mayer and the Kōdōkan; Early European women’s judo in Japan. In: Proceedings of the 3rd European Science of Judo Research Symposium & 2nd Scientific and Professional Conference on Judo: Applicable Research in Judo. University of Zagreb, 12-15, 2016.
- Mike Callan, Conor Heffernan, Amanda Spenn: Women’s Jūjutsu and Judo in the Early Twentieth-Century: The Cases of Phoebe Roberts, Edith Garrud, and Sarah Mayer. The International Journal of the History of Sport, Volume 35, S. 530-553, 2018 – Issue 6: New Historical Work on Women and Gender, 2019. doi:10.1080/09523367.2018.1544553.
- Jean Williams: A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport, Part One: Sporting Women, 1850-1960. Routledge, 2014.
Authority data (person): Wikipedia people search | No GND personal record. Last checked: March 14, 2024.
2024-03-14 17:33:26
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