How many black belts in your art?

[Spartacus Maximus]

The number of people with shodan and above is not easy to tell precisely. It depends form what point the count starts. There are at least 2 or 3 hundred people graded to shodan and above by my instructor over several decades. The very earliest have between 5 and 7th dan.

[MatsuShinshii]

Since our association went through a bit of a self destruction I have know idea what the exact number of inactive Yudansha and Kodansha there are, however I can tell you how how many active we presently have;

Inactive/Deceased/Retired

Kodansha

Judan - 2 (died in 1982 and 2007)

Kudan - 1 (Retired in 2015)

Hachidan - 1 (died in 1994)

Active

Kodansha

Hachidan - 1

Nanadan - 2 (Me)

Yudansha

Godan - 8

Yondan - 13

Sandan - 18

Nidan - 15

Shodan - 48

Mudansha

Ikkyu - 44

Nikyu - 64

Sankyu - 37

Yonkyu - 14

Gokyu - 72

Rokkyu - 63

Shechikyu - 75

Hachikyu - 81

Our registry is fairly old school as we still use a rank registration book, a master and copy certificate program. However our associations ranks are listed in our associations yearly news letter, which is where I pulled this information from.

Edited January 13, 2017 by MatsuShinshii

[strangepair03]

I train in Isshin Ryu.......you don't have enough space on a calculator to add up all the Dan ranks (real or imagined) in the style

[Luther unleashed]

Sadly I had written a post with some cool numbers based on some things said here and it didn't go through. Even more sadly I don't feel like writing it all again right now, I'll try and post tomorrow. Great info guys.

[CTTKDKing]

I'm in the unusual place that I can actually answer this question exactly. I do hold a 2nd Dan in WTF TKD, but this past summer I got my 1st Degree BB in Sho Biyn Ju and in that system we have 39 black belts certified under my instructor in CT. The cooler thing IMO is that nationally there are 3 people with the rank of Sensei in the system and I had the pleasure of having the first female Sensei testing along side of me this past summer. for her Sensei-ship. While I was honored to do so, I was assigned to be her uki for defense demonstration and I do have to say that, I hurt more than everyone else at the test at the end. She really laid into me. Ha ha