Kevin Asano became an Olympic silver medalist in judo while still a student at San Jose State University, where he had been given a true sense of belonging away from his Hawaii home.

The man and mentor responsible, Yoshihiro “Yosh” Uchida, died last month at age 104, with his burial service held Tuesday. His memory lasts, no less.

Asano, a Pearl City High School alumnus, would not have it another way. He was one of many who learned about life from Uchida, a legendary judoka whose inclination to educate spanned generations.

“Winning is more like the byproduct of his investment into young men and women,” Asano said. “The fact is, most of them are not going to be (Olympians). I don’t know how many hundreds of men and women he mentored — you’ll have a small handful that would make it to the Olympics. But I don’t think that’s what he would even consider his success. It’s the lives that he touched.”

The New York Times memorialized Uchida in a story earlier this month. Dating back to the start of his coaching career in the 1940s, countless more could be told through the lens of those fortunate enough to have heeded his wisdom.

Here’s one.

Two or three days out of the week, Asano would embark on a morning jog as a college-aged athlete in peak shape, only to see Uchida in his 60s doing as much and more. Uchida ran every morning. It was a matter of principle.

As long as he could run, he ran. As long as he could coach, he coached. And he did so at San Jose State with minimal financial backing from the school. Judo had to be largely self-sufficient. Uchida had to be more than a judo coach, that is, to afford the decades he spent in the role. He was also an entrepreneur who reportedly oversaw more than a few dozen medical laboratories, a chain he built from scratch in Northern California.

Asano said he worked at one for a semester. The top-down support of said enterprise appeared to reflect the structure of the San Jose State judo program, which won 52 men’s national championships and 26 women’s national championships with Uchida and his numerous volunteer assistant coaches through the years.

His business was similarly successful. He reportedly sold it at a price of $30 million in 1989, per The New York Times. He was nearly 70 years old and somehow, in his mind, just getting started.

Decades later, Asano in his 40s asked Uchida about when things would click into place, when circumstances would allow him to make the biggest impact. In his 60s, Uchida said.

“It’s like, all right, all you’ve done for the first 60 years is prepare for this last quarter where you have the greatest influence, or you could have the greatest influence,” Asano said.

Uchida embraced the fact that he could not achieve what he wanted to without help from others. In that way, he needed them as much as they needed him. Asano came to fully realize what that actually meant when he found himself in a position to lead.

In 2019, he opened his own dojo out of a 20-by-20 garage. In 2024, the Honolulu Judo Club features more than 150 active members with about 20 instructors at a 3,000-square-foot facility. It’s grown to the point where Asano, also a full-time financial adviser and co-founder of the Pacific Rim Legacy Group, has mainly focused on oversight in his HJC leadership. The foundation has been laid, and the future of the club is in good hands, whether Asano would remain in an active role or not.

That’s what he always wanted. That’s what Uchida worked for — a shared legacy to support the upstanding citizens of tomorrow. Judo was just the vehicle, not the final destination.

“I’m not going to retire till I die,” Asano said.

“I might not be doing what I’m doing now as far as work, but this whole idea that you just don’t stop — if you stop, from what I learned from him, then you just kind of stop growing, you stop learning, you stop giving, and then you just kind of fade off.”

At the U.S. Olympic Trials ahead of the Seoul Summer Games in 1988, Asano received a simple but critical piece of advice that shaped his life as he knows it now.

“Don’t forget where you came from,” longtime San Jose State volunteer coach and alumnus Keith Nakasone told Asano.

Though several years apart, Asano, 61, and Nakasone, 68, trained under some of the same senseis during stints in Hawaii, San Jose and Okinawa, where Nakasone was born and raised and where Asano lived for part of his childhood.

Both were mentored by Uchida, and so both understood the essence of his life’s work.

Don’t ask what judo can do for you. Ask what you can do for judo.

“You look at what (Asano’s) done in Hawaii for judo and the community, I think Mr. Uchida would be very, very proud of him,” Nakasone said.