What’s a “kuro obi”?
Well, on the one hand, it’s the title of a pretty cool, historically inaccurate but really neat-to-watch karate movie! Some of the actors in the movie are in fact high-level karate students, so the techniques that are thrown are thrown very well indeed.
On the other hand, a “kuro obi” (which just means “black belt”) doesn’t mean anything special at all. It just keeps your pants up. Or really, your gi jacket closed. When it doesn’t come untied at inconvenient points during class.
But the system of colored belts had no place in the history of karate in Okinawa, because it was a prohibited study! Nobody made a living as a karate teacher, because that would have been like posting a sign in front of your door that says “Illegal Drug Dealer” in the United States.
You might get a lot of business, but you’d also also be put out of business quickly by the authorities.
In Okinawa, students trained in whatever they were wearing when they made the trek late at night to study with their instructors. And they didn’t brag about the study because, well, see the above.
When Sensei Jiguro Kano developed Judo as a martial art, he incorporated a system of belts that demonstrated rank. When he befriended Sensei Gichen Funakoshi, the father of modern karate, Sensei Kano passed on the idea of training in the white pajamas we call a “gi”, and keeping the top of the pajamas closed with an “obi” (belt) which had a color that designated rank of a student inside the system.
Shotokan Karate is the style of karate I study, and it looks to Sensei Funakoshi as its founder, and therefore it uses belts of varying colors to designate the status of a student in classes at dojo throughout the world.
Does a “kuro obi” indicate that a student knows the entire syllabus of Shotokan Karate? Hardly! There are ten levels of the black belt in the Japan Karate Association ranking system. I suspect that the tests for the more advanced black belts include dematerialization and teleportation, but that’s only a suspicion. But the advanced black belts all seem to do that sort of thing!
A “shodan”, or first degree black-belt student, is the lowest form of life among real karate students. In fact, the general view of a new “kuro obi” is that he’s now finally out of kindergarten, and he can now be expected to get serious about studying karate.
But the idea of rankings between students, and the idea of “senior” and “junior” students, is a little funny, at best.
Everybody knows the best student in a dojo. All the students in a dojo train in group classes, so everybody gets to see the level of technical expertise of the other students. And nobody has a particularly swelled head, because everybody has some techniques where they shine a bit, and a few that they do very poorly indeed.
Keeps everybody grounded.
In the dojo that I attend, there are students who are a couple of levels above the level that Sensei Koyama held when he opened the dojo many years ago, when he was fresh from the Japan Karate Association’s classes. They are extraordinary students.
I’ve never asked Sensei Koyama about his training classes in Japan, and that reminds me I want to; there’s a wonderful discussion of that dojo and the classes there in a wonderful book called “Moving Zen”, which I want to re-read soon. But I get to talk regularly to an advanced Sensei who been there, done that, and has the t-shirt. So I want to hear about it. And about his discussions with Sensei Nakayama, who was one of Sensei Koyama’s teachers.
But a black belt is one of a series of belts given to students of martial arts, and I suspect that the larger number of colors of belts is designed to give the student some reinforcement as he progresses through the syllabus. Previously in Japan there were two colors of belt, white and black (yeah, I took art classes, too. They aren’t really colors. We all get that).
And receiving a black belt is the most important day of a karate student’s life, and at the same time, nothing special at all.
After all, a student who stops studying because he’s gotten a colored belt wasn’t very motivated in the first place. And a low-ranking black belt is just a piece of cloth that holds a jacket closed, just the way that a high-ranking black belt is just a piece of cloth holding a jacket closed.
Now, does all the above mean that I won’t treasure my “kuro obi”, if I ever get one? Of course not. Does it mean that it’s the end of my training? Gee, I sure hope not!
Because in the same way that seated meditation is the goal in Soto Zen, training is the actual goal in Shotokan Karate. Not breaking boards or a triple reverse upside down kick, or winning tournaments, or even self-defense.
Training is the goal.
And while that sounds dumb as a stump, it seems to work pretty well, because the goodies in karate (better health and coordination and strength and wind and flexibility and balance and friends in the dojo and increased confidence) are all a function of training.
So why do I train in Shotokan Karate?
Well, primarily so I get to continue training in Shotokan Karate!
