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The concept of coloured
belts was taken from Judo, as was the basic design of the dogi. Jigoro
Kano, the founder of Judo, created the dan/kyu grading system in
1883, when he first awarded the shodan degree. By 1886, the dan
levels were represented by the black sash worn with the traditional kimono
used while training. In 1907, these were replaced by the more practical
and modern dogi (largely based on peasants' work clothes, if I'm
not mistaken) and the narrower belt was then introduced.
Gichin Funakoshi, the father of modern Japanese Karate-do, adopted this
grading system but with a significant variation. He introduced a quantitative
grading system, whereas Kano simply awarded the grade when he saw
fit. This system was later adopted by other martial arts, especially when
their practitioners became so numerous that the respective Chief Instructors
could no longer evaluate them all. Given the 10 million or so worldwide
practitioners of Kyokushin alone, this seems like a reasonable system
to use. It theoretically also eliminates personal prejudices that can
happen with a single examiner, just as it does in any other quantifiable
educational subject, but it introduces variations in the standards of
grading and of course, the personal prejudices can still be there. You
win some, you lose some.
At first, there were only white, brown, and black belts. While students
still went through a kyu grading system, their belt colours didn't
change that often. This is still the case in some schools, at least in
one Aikido club I have visited. It is thought that the additional colours
were again a Judo innovation, possibly due to the introduction of Judo
to the Olympics in the 1960s. There is a (useful) myth about how the belts
were all white, as as you kept training, the belts became successively
dirtier, until at last they became so dirty they were black i.e an indication
of time and intensity of training. This is a useful allegory, but is unlikely
to be true. The Japanese are far too fastidious to let something become
as dirty as that, regardless of the symbolism it offers..
The colour scheme adopted for both the IKO(1) and the IKO(2) in 1997
is white, orange, blue, yellow, green, brown, and black, with 2 kyu
grades associated with each of the non-white and non-black colours,
for a total of 10 kyu. White is ungraded. Until recently, a red
belt was used for 10th and 9th kyu, and then, shortly before
Sosai died, this was changed as a sign of respect (and to avoid
confusion) for those styles for which red belt is a senior dan
grade (5th dan and up, depending on style). At first,
it was replaced with a white belt with one black stripe and two black
stripes respectively, but only some dojo used this, quite possibly
because at that stage in the game, most people want to see (and show)
more obvious signs of progression and a couple of inconspicuous black
stripes on a white belt would certainly not suffice for that! Hence the
move to orange instead. However, some organisations still use the red.
In the Budo
Karate of Mas Oyama, Cameron Quinn explains in some detail his
interpretation of the original choice of colours for the belts, relating
the significance of those colours to Zen-Buddhism and its nominal precursors,
the Ayurveda, Hinduism, and Yoga.
On the other hand, I have also been told that Tadashi
Nakamura (now the head of World
Seido Karate), in his book The Human Face of Karate takes credit
for the colour system with no regard whatsoever for chromato-spiritual
connections. You choose. |
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