Standardizing The Subjective

Firstly I want to make this clear. I am not going to give my personal opinion about any grading syllabus, or say whether I think it’s a good or bad thing. What I will say, however, is the uses of the grading syllabus and what it has done in the evolution of karate. 

Karate always has and always will be highly subjective, but yet we still see areas in our karate structure which has created a standardised form of our martial art. This is the grading systems.

Before the birth of what we now formally see as Shotokan there was no formal grading system. People practised karate and that was it, no different colour belts, no grading examinations, only personal development. When reading “Karate-Do, My Way of Life” By Gichin Funakoshi Shihan we read about many anecdotes that describe old karate masters challenging each other and people wanting to demonstrate their skills to other karate adepts. Their was no way of knowing what standards someone’s karate is, the only way you could find out was through watching kata demonstrations or even within a battle. However it is important to remember that the social setting that karate held in those days was extremely different to that of today, karate was a hidden art, people did not openly practise it for hundreds of years. Therefore there was no need to a rational way to view karateka.

Where as in our modern times, karate is openly practised all over the world, the social setting that its placed under is now a lot more accepting to the art compared to hundred years ago. There is a need now to be able to rationally categories people into grades. There is a need to have a standard for each grade, to what needs to be achieved in Shotokan karate; there are criteria that one must be able to achieve too reach into the next category. Therefore we need a system that can clearly show how people are progressing in karate, which in Shotokan is our belt and grading systems. The best way to describe what a grade in karate is is to relate it to an education system. Imagine that there are a number of years in a school, to progress to the next year the students have to pass an examination that tests their knowledge that they have learnt in that year and in the years pervious. The whole system has a flow, with people continuously learning, continuously progressing, by gaining new knowledge. The same applies in our grading system in karate. We attend lessons, we learn, we show our understanding and we progress to the next grade/belt.

The reasons for this change are never really looked at. Why did Funakoshi Shihan decide to create this system for a martial art that had no base note? Well for one society, and the popularity of karate, were both changing when Funakoshi Shihan designed a system of grades. More and more people were training and more and more were records and classification required in a lot of daily institutions. And since the initial system it has evolved to what it has in our modern times, it now not only makes sure that students are at a certain standard but also works in many other ways.

So what do we get from the grading system?

By grading we achieve not only a new belt and a certificate, but also achieve a level of social transformation. Any karateka will know that when a chance to grade comes up things begin to get intense; you’re pushed to your limits both physically and with your knowledge of karate. You go over your kata (Forms), your kihon (Basics) and you’re Kumite (sparring) to get every detail right. Then on the day of your grading you become nervous, but your exited the adrenaline makes you shake, you feel that whatever you do is not ‘good’ karate. Then you achieve the next grade, you feel pride and accomplishment and can’t wait to the next lesson where you can show off your new belt. It’s this transition time where the social transformation begins, not in the sense of changing, but instead character building that one achieves by going through this process. We learn to push ourselves to reach the standards set out in the syllabus, and then we have an examination which tests you to perform under tense and pressured situations. Not only do we achieve the belt but also the skills that it takes to get the belt. In many ways these skills are just as important as the grade itself, as they are transferable and can be used in both karate and in everyday life. Skills like confidence and self belief, and the ability to perform in strange conditions, which takes a level of concentration and relaxation.

These skills are the essential point that I’m trying to make here. Back in Funakoshi Shihan’s era these skills were born from one’s karate, but via a completely different way to our modern karate, they had no system to create such situations and learned these skills through different means. However in modern karate we have a system to thank for the transference of skills, it creates a social setting that pushes for these skills to be used. In some ways this could even speed up the ability of these skills, the settings of grading are unique purely because it’s a self motivating experience where one can notice the important of such skills.

The achievement of passing a grade is half karate half spirit.