Shotokan karate another belt question

[faido]

I began shotokan about a year and a half ago and yet I've never heard of a blue belt. Our club is recognized by both the JKA and ISKF, so far as I know. Or do these mean nothing?

[saishu]

I began shotokan about a year and a half ago and yet I've never heard of a blue belt. Our club is recognized by both the JKA and ISKF, so far as I know. Or do these mean nothing?

Some schools use Blue instead of Purple, or they use Blue as either the first or second purple. I know ISKF doesn't use it, but I have seen some JKA schools in Japan using it instead of purple.

Tomo

[shotokanwarrior]

Do not sweat it, Karate is not about Belts.

[24fightingchickens]

People seem to have random luck when it comes to having their ranks recognized by various clubs. I hope the day comes when karate systems that are similar enough automatically recognize any rank the person has earned before the same way colleges recognize any degree you ever earned no matter how long it has been or whether or not the subject matter was the same. When I went for a masters degree in business administration, no one asked me to go back and earn a bachelor's degree in business. My psychology/sociology/political science degree worked fine for them. When people come to train with me, I prefer to just let them wear whatever rank they say they have, because in my class, I am the teacher, and everyone else is the student, and their ranks do not affect me, and no one is an assistant, so it doesn't matter who wears what. Belts and ranks are for personal satisfaction only, imo.

[samertz]

Belts and ranks are for personal satisfaction only, imo.

I agree 100% with this. Once you get to a certain level you can identify where someone should fall. If they claim to be a Shodan or something you can usually tell if they are one or not by watching them do a Zenkutsu Dachi Gedan Barai. Just one movement is all it takes to usually figure someone out.

Karate is all about learning and constantly striving for improvement. The color of the belt doesn't really matter as long as you are learning. Even as a teacher, you are constantly learning from your students as well as passing knowledge to them. Everything is give and take.

Also please try to remember that the whole belt system is only like 90ish years old. Back in the day no one use to wear a belt or anything to show rank and it all came down to what you could do on the floor. IMHO martial arts should go back to that type of mentality, because with all the places that just hand out rank and stuff kind of degrade the whole idea of the arts. At the end of the day all anything comes down to is what can you do and how well can you do it.

So don't worry about if your school uses a blue belt or a purple or even a pink for that matter. Just ask yourself, how well can you do what you do, and do you think you could use what you know if you had to defend yourself or someone you love, because that is really what it is all about.

Scot

[G95champ]

I would show him and see what he thinks. Sometimes the belts don't match up from school to school even if the style is the same. I would have thought you would have filled out past training history before you started the class. O well. Since its Shotokan I would show him and see if he thought I was at that leval.

[NidaninNJ]

So for the places that have blue belt, is it a beginner rank (just after white?) or the same as purple belt? I'm still confused. I've done Shotokan for more than a 10 years and have only seen a couple blue belts and I thought those weren't shotokan people.