by Nick Lowry
To understand what our ranking means and how we arrive at our ranking you have to understand that we are primarily a teaching institution- The initial ranks, kyu grades up through the dan grades Shodan , Nidan and Sandan all carry a set of technical requirements — particular katas, kihons, and waza, that demonstrate a body of recognizable skill sets and further more demonstrate particular refinements of those skill sets as the student goes along through the process.
But, in our system of ranking, there is a shift that happens at Yondan– the technical requirements drop away and the teaching requirements come to the fore — looking at advancement to Yondan and higher is much more a question of “By their fruits you shall know them”
— By Yondan we expect to be seeing a person teaching folks under him or her up to the level of at least Shodan — the Yondan’s test is basically how well do his Shodans (and subsequent Nidans and Sandans) measure up on their technical requirements and progression? — How well is he transmitting the skill sets and the refinement of those skill sets to the next generations? In addition, it is good to see the Yondan also refining his own personal skill sets, but that is really peripheral to his ranking…
–Godan is somewhat of a placeholder, yet still mostly about teaching and self refinement. By this time we hope to be seeing teaching skills improve and become more specialized — Is this teacher mainly focused on teaching individuals, classes, seminars, running dojos or clubs, or publishing material (books, blogs, videos etc.) for the wider community? How is he or she contributing to the art and the teaching of the art over all?
—Rokudan is functionally like Yondan but now, we are expecting to see the teacher producing students of Yondan quality — they have become a teacher of teachers – and are likely administrating, or assisting in the the administration of, clubs or dojos. The main question to answer for Rokudan : Are they producing, or helping to produce, Yondan level teachers and How do these Yondans stack up? Of course, all the while we hope to see the person continuing to refine his or her own unique expression of the art…
— Nanadan is again a place holder of self refinement like Godan — Now we ask Do his peers recognize this persons unique contributions, unique teaching skills, unique technical research?…. It should be Clear an obvious…
–Hachidan — What do your Rokudans look like? The person is now a great granddaddy or grandma of teachers — How do you run things in your neck of the woods? What sort of organization are you responsible for? What is your vision for the future of this art? How are you contributing to make that vision a reality?
In addition to all of the above we also like to follow some basic time requirements –This time oriented ranking tradition is our way of recognizing that it takes a good bit of time to grow a tree from a sapling; it takes its own particular time to cook a good meal from scratch and let the flavors develop; and takes its own time to hatch a chick from an egg — There is no need to rush the teaching process, and in fact rushing it often screws it up…Cutting corners in time is possible, and arguably necessary under special circumstances, but it does tend to damage the product and the outcomes… if anything, our standard time requirements are probably already too short and as an organization we should consider adjusting them — Our tradition set its time requirements many decades ago, and they made sense at the time in a world where average life span was in the 50s or 60s — Now we are living in to the 70s and 80s on average and we should probably allow for that shift— just something to chew on….
