Unit 12 · Who Hangs the Sign

Japan had hundreds of martial schools, each called a ryūha, long before judo or karate had ranks. Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū, a school of swordsmanship from the 1400s, is often named among the oldest that still teaches. Schools like it kept their teaching inside a line of teachers, and outsiders rarely saw it.

A student in such a school received paper licenses at a few turning points. An early scroll might list the school’s lessons by name, and it was called a mokuroku, meaning catalog. The highest level was often a menkyo kaiden, a license of full transmission. It said the holder had received the whole school and could pass it on.

These licenses were few, and there was no public list of them. A teacher might give a full license to only a handful of students in a lifetime. Authority rested on a personal tie between two people, not on an office. That older pattern still shapes how many schools talk about a teacher’s line today.

In 1895 the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai, the Greater Japan Martial Virtue Society, was founded in Kyoto. It had close ties to the government and the imperial household. In 1899 it opened the Butokuden, a large practice hall near Heian Shrine. It held yearly demonstrations there that drew teachers from many schools.

In the early 1900s the society began to grant teaching titles, including hanshi and kyōshi, to senior teachers. A title from a national society meant something different from a scroll signed by one teacher. It told the public that a central body had approved the holder. Judo, kendo and later karate teachers sought these titles.

The society grew into a state organization during the war years. After Japan’s defeat, the Allied occupation dissolved it in 1946, along with other groups tied to the wartime state. New federations for judo, kendo and karate took over the work of grading. The idea of a central body that approves teachers outlived the society itself.

Kanō Jigorō gave the first judo dan ranks in 1883. Dan means step or grade, and each black-belt level had a number. The system let judo schools across Japan speak one language of rank. Other arts watched it work in schools, universities and the police.

Karate came to mainland Japan from Okinawa in the early 1920s. In Okinawa, teachers had passed on the art without belts or printed grades. In 1924 Funakoshi Gichin awarded the first karate dan ranks to some of his students in Tokyo. Karate teachers also adopted a jacket and belt close to judo’s.

Numbered ranks made karate easier to fit into Japanese universities and into the Butoku Kai. They also changed the question of authority. A student’s rank now depended on who signed the certificate and which group the signer belonged to. When groups later split, their certificates split too.

Funakoshi Gichin wrote poetry under the pen name Shōtō, often translated as pine waves. In 1939 his students opened a practice hall in Tokyo. They named it Shōtōkan, meaning Shōtō’s hall. Funakoshi himself mostly called what he taught simply karate-dō.

The hall burned in American air raids on Tokyo in 1945. The building was gone, but its name stayed. Students and later groups used Shōtōkan as the name of a style, one branch of karate with its own teachers and forms. Other branches took names in a similar way, from a teacher, a phrase or a place.

Gōjū-ryū is one example. Miyagi Chōjun of Naha, Okinawa, chose the name, meaning hard-soft school, from a line in an old Chinese text on fighting arts. It was registered with the Butoku Kai in the early 1930s. A style name gave a group a label that could be written on a certificate and a sign.

The Japan Karate Association, or JKA, was founded in Tokyo in 1949. Funakoshi was honored as its chief instructor. Nakayama Masatoshi led its teaching for decades and sent instructors abroad in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of Funakoshi’s older students formed a separate group, the Shōtōkai, and did not join.

Funakoshi died in 1957, and Nakayama died in 1987. In 1990 the JKA split into rival groups, each saying it was the true association. The dispute over which group could use the JKA name went to the courts in Japan. Instructors around the world had to choose a side, and their students’ certificates followed them.

The JKA story shows a common pattern called a schism, a split in a group over who holds authority. Similar splits happened in many karate, taekwondo and kung fu groups. Each new group usually kept the founder’s photograph on the wall. The fight was not over the past but over who speaks for it now.

The Kodokan in Tokyo, the school Kanō founded in 1882, has kept records of the judo ranks it awards since its early years. A Kodokan rank can be checked against its books. National judo bodies in many countries also keep their own registers of promotions. The International Judo Federation sets the rules for rank used in its world events.

Taekwondo built a similar system later. The Kukkiwon in Seoul issues dan certificates with a registration number to students in many countries. A teacher abroad can apply for a student’s Kukkiwon rank through the proper channels. The number lets anyone ask whether a certificate is real.

A register changes what a certificate means. Under the old scroll system, trust came from knowing the teacher. Under a register, trust comes from an office that can answer a question. Critics say registers can turn rank into a fee; supporters say they protect students from false claims. Both sides are describing the same bureaucracy, an office that runs by records and rules.

Maeda Mitsuyo trained at the Kodokan in Tokyo and left Japan in 1904. For about ten years he toured the United States, Europe, Cuba and Mexico, taking on challengers. In Brazil he was often called Conde Koma. He arrived in Brazil in 1914 and settled in Belém, a port city at the mouth of the Amazon.

In Belém, Maeda taught several local students. Carlos Gracie, born in 1902 to a family of Scottish descent, was one of them. Carlos later taught his younger brothers, including Hélio Gracie. The brothers opened an academy in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s. At the time, many Brazilians still called the art jiu-jitsu, an older word for Japanese grappling schools.

Over the next decades the Gracies built a public name through challenge matches and newspaper coverage. Their version became known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The family name and the art’s name grew so close that many people treated them as one. That closeness would later become a legal question.

Maeda’s students in Belém were not only Gracies. Luiz França also learned from him and later taught in Rio de Janeiro. França’s student Oswaldo Fadda opened his own academy in a working-class area of Rio’s north zone. Fadda’s students entered competitions under their own name, not the Gracie name.

Historians of the art point to these lines to show that lineage is a tree, not a single trunk. A tree has branches, separate lines that start from one teacher and grow apart. Some Brazilian schools stress the Fadda line on their walls. Others trace to Maeda through the Gracies, and some trace through both.

The story of the Fadda line also shows class in Brazilian history. The Gracie academy drew many students from wealthier parts of Rio. Fadda taught in poorer neighborhoods and at low cost. When a school hangs a family tree chart, it is choosing which branch of this history to honor.

Rorion Gracie, a son of Hélio, moved to southern California in 1978. He taught in his garage and later opened an academy in Torrance. In November 1993 he helped start the Ultimate Fighting Championship, whose first event was held in Denver. His brother Royce won that event, and the family name spread quickly.

Rorion registered Gracie Jiu-Jitsu as a trademark in the United States. A trademark is a word or symbol that tells buyers who is selling a product or service. His cousin Carley Gracie, who also taught in California, challenged the mark. The dispute went to trial and reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled in 2000.

The case showed how a family name, a brand and an art can pull apart. Some relatives wanted the name to stay open to anyone in the family line. Others wanted a single owner who could control quality. Courts answered only the legal question of the mark. They did not decide who teaches the art best.

In 1994 Carlos Gracie Jr., a son of Carlos Gracie, led the founding of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Confederation in Rio de Janeiro. Its world championship began in 1996. In 2002 the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, or IBJJF, was founded to run events outside Brazil. A federation is a body that joins many clubs under shared rules.

The IBJJF keeps a register of black belts and sets minimum ages and years at belt levels for its events. To enter an IBJJF event, an athlete’s rank must follow those rules. Teachers who belong can check a rival school’s claim against the list. Not every school joins, and other bodies run their own events and registers.

A federation’s power comes from membership, not from law. A school that never joins can still teach and give belts. But its students cannot enter that federation’s events with those ranks until they meet its rules. Tournaments, rather than scrolls, became one of the main places where rank claims were tested in public.

The Lanham Act of 1946 is the main federal trademark law in the United States. It lets a business register a mark with the Patent and Trademark Office. A registered mark can stop rivals from using a confusingly similar name to sell the same kind of service. Martial arts schools and associations have registered names, logos and patches under it.

The law also has a limit. A generic word, the ordinary name for a whole kind of thing, cannot be anyone’s trademark. Words like karate or judo name whole arts, so no one can own them for teaching. A school can own a special name built around a generic word, such as a logo or a family name joined to it.

No federal agency in the United States licenses martial arts teachers or checks their ranks. A certificate from a weekend seminar, a short course taught by a visiting teacher, carries whatever weight the people who see it give it. Federations, registers, court rulings and the students who choose a school all take part in deciding which claims count.

Fencing has been part of every modern Summer Olympics since 1896. Its world body, the Fédération Internationale d’Escrime, or FIE, was founded in Paris in 1913. For decades, a jury of judges watched each bout and voted on whether a touch had landed. Touches with a light blade are often too fast to see clearly.

In 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, épée became the first weapon scored with an electric scoring apparatus. A wire ran from each fencer’s weapon to a box that lit a lamp when a touch arrived. Foil followed at the 1956 Melbourne Games, and sabre at the 1988 Seoul Games. Each weapon needed its own jacket and wiring rules.

The machines made results easier to check and harder to dispute. They also changed the look of a bout, with fencers tied to reels by cords. Some older masters said the change rewarded speed over form. The FIE’s standardization, making gear the same everywhere, became the price of a scoreboard every audience could read.

In Kanō Jigorō’s Kodokan, judo players wore white jackets, and many Japanese teachers saw white as part of the art. For decades, Olympic judo followed that custom. One player wore a red or white belt marker so judges could tell them apart. On television, two white jackets tangled together were hard to follow.

Anton Geesink of the Netherlands, who won the open-weight gold medal in Tokyo in 1964, pressed for a colored jacket. The International Judo Federation approved the blue judogi in the late 1990s. It was used at the Olympic Games for the first time in Sydney in 2000. One athlete now wears white and the other blue.

The change drew objections from judo leaders in Japan, who argued for the white jacket. Supporters answered that a world sport needs to be readable by viewers and judges. The debate showed two institutions with different aims. The Kodokan guards a teaching tradition, while the IJF runs a televised world competition.

Amateur boxers at the Olympics fought without head protection for decades. Headgear, a padded guard for the head, became required at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Amateur boxing leaders said it would lower injuries. For the next thirty years, the padded head was part of how people recognized Olympic boxing.

In 2013 the world amateur boxing body, AIBA, ruled that elite men would compete without headgear. The Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016 were the first Olympics since 1980 in which men boxed without it. Women kept the headgear at Rio. AIBA cited its own medical review, and some doctors disagreed with its reading of the evidence.

The headgear story shows how a governing body shapes a sport through its gear rules. Removing the guard also made Olympic bouts look more like professional boxing. That mattered as the body opened Olympic boxing to professional fighters in 2016. Equipment rules carry choices about safety, audience and the sport’s image.

Wrestling was part of the ancient Olympic Games and of the first modern Games in 1896. On February 12, 2013, the IOC Executive Board recommended dropping it from the 2020 program. The Olympic program is the list of sports and events at a Games. Wrestling fans in Iran, the United States and Russia joined in protest.

The world wrestling body, then called FILA, changed quickly. Its president resigned that month, and Nenad Lalović of Serbia took over. The federation added more women’s weight classes and changed scoring rules to reward action. It also gave athletes and women a larger voice in its leadership.

On September 8, 2013, IOC members meeting in Buenos Aires voted wrestling back onto the program for 2020 and 2024. In 2014 FILA renamed itself United World Wrestling. The episode showed that even the oldest Olympic sport keeps its place only by meeting the IOC’s current tests. A reform is a planned change meant to fix a problem.

Professional sumo in Japan is run by the Japan Sumo Association. Its six yearly tournaments, its ranks up to yokozuna and its Shinto-linked ring ceremonies make it a Japanese institution. Wrestlers live in stables and follow the association’s rules on dress and daily life. There are no weight classes in professional sumo.

The International Sumo Federation was founded in 1992 to spread amateur sumo around the world. It holds world championships and divides wrestlers into weight classes, like Olympic wrestling. It also runs women’s events, which professional sumo does not have. Sumo has appeared at the World Games, a multi-sport event for sports outside the Olympics.

The two codes answer different questions. Professional sumo answers to a Japanese audience and a long tradition of ranks and ceremony. Amateur sumo answers to national federations that need a sport they can teach and judge anywhere. Amateur leaders have sought Olympic recognition, and sumo is not on the Olympic program.

The Olympic program has limited room, and many governing bodies want a place on it. In 1980 a group of international federations formed what is now the International World Games Association. The first World Games were held in Santa Clara, California, in 1981. They are held every four years, usually the year after a Summer Olympics.

The World Games have included martial arts and combat sports that were not on the Olympic program, such as sumo, ju-jitsu, kickboxing and Muaythai. Karate appeared there for years before its single Olympic appearance in Tokyo. For many federations, the World Games are a place to show that they can run a fair international event.

The World Games work under IOC patronage, meaning official support without full Olympic status. They use existing venues in a host city rather than building a new Olympic park. For smaller arts, the Games give television time, funding reasons for national teams and a record of results. They also require the same standard rules that the Olympics do.

Schwingen is a form of Swiss folk wrestling with roots in the Alpine farming regions. Wrestlers wear short trousers of heavy canvas over their clothes, a garment used only for this sport. Bouts take place in a round ring covered with sawdust. Village and regional festivals held matches long before any national body existed.

The Eidgenössischer Schwingerverband, the Swiss wrestling federation, was founded in 1895. It organizes the national festival, held every three years, where the champion is named Schwingerkönig, king of the wrestlers. The best-known prize is a live bull. The festival also includes alphorn music and flag throwing.

The federation writes rules for Swiss rings, not for world television. It has no weight classes, and its heroes are often farmers, butchers and carpenters. The national festival draws tens of thousands of spectators. Its festival culture is the institution it answers to, and the Olympic stage would ask it to change what it protects.

Glíma is Iceland’s traditional wrestling. Old Icelandic sagas mention wrestling contests, and glíma has been treated as a national sport since the late 1800s. Wrestlers wear special leather belts, and the rules stress upright posture and fair conduct. Icelandic clubs still hold glíma contests each year, and the sport keeps a small, steady following.

In 1912 a team of Icelandic wrestlers gave a glíma demonstration at the Stockholm Olympics. A demonstration sport is shown at a Games without official medals. Iceland was then under Danish rule, and the display helped show Icelandic identity to a world audience. Glíma did not return to the Olympic program.

At home, glíma’s top contest is the fight for the Grettir Belt, named after Grettir, a strong hero of an Icelandic saga. The contest dates to the early 1900s. The Icelandic Glíma Association governs the sport today. Its rules serve a small nation’s schools and clubs and its sense of a shared past.

Pehlwani is a form of wrestling long practiced in north India and Pakistan. Wrestlers train in an akhara, a training ground with a pit of soft earth, often under one senior teacher. Many akharas follow a strict daily life with shared meals and exercise. Matches called dangal are held at fairs and festivals, often on earth, with prizes from local patrons.

Pehlwani wrestlers gained fame abroad in the early 1900s. Ghulam Mohammad Baksh, known as the Great Gama, traveled to London in 1910 and wrestled the Polish champion Stanisław Zbyszko. Gama became a hero across South Asia. His fame came from challenge matches, not from any Olympic event.

Olympic wrestling needed a mat, a clock and weight classes. Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav of Maharashtra won a freestyle bronze medal at the 1952 Helsinki Games. It was independent India’s first individual Olympic medal. Today many Indian wrestlers train on both earth and mats, moving between two institutions with different rules.

Kendo is Japanese fencing with bamboo swords and armor. After 1945 the occupation restricted it in Japanese schools. The All Japan Kendo Federation was founded in 1952. In 1970 national bodies formed the International Kendo Federation, and the first World Kendo Championships were held in Tokyo that year.

Kendo judging looks for more than a touch. Referees award a point only when a strike lands with correct spirit, posture and follow-through, a standard called yūkō-datotsu, a valid strike. The rule asks referees to judge the whole action. That makes kendo hard to score with machines like the ones fencing adopted.

Kendo leaders in Japan have long said they do not seek a place on the Olympic program. They argue that chasing medals could push the art toward scoring points instead of training character. Kendo still has ranks, a world federation and world championships. It shows that an art can be international and organized while choosing a non-Olympic path.

Coaches in judo, boxing and taekwondo begin every session with a warm-up. Sports science backs them: warm muscles contract faster and stretch further before they strain.

1. Practice where a grown-up knows what you are doing. Clear a space at least two big steps wide all around.

2. Do a dynamic warm-up for five to eight minutes: jog in place, arm circles, leg swings, walking lunges, hip circles.

3. Save long, held stretches for after practice, when the muscles are warm.

4. Watch the move in the Dojo. Learn it step by step, slowly, before adding speed.

5. Never snap an elbow or knee fully straight. Stop just short of locking the joint.

What helps: practice both sides. Short sessions on many days build skill faster than one long session. Sleep helps a new skill settle.

Stay safe: solo and into the air, never at a person. Kicks stay at knee or belly height until your balance is steady. Falls only on a mat or soft grass. Stop if something hurts.

Karate’s kata, the forms passed down through lineages such as Shotokan, often pair a block with an immediate counter. The block-and-punch combination trains that pairing. Lineages argue about details, but this pattern appears in many of them.

1. Stand in a front stance with fists at your waist.

2. Block: sweep the front arm through a downward or inside block.

3. Punch: as the blocking arm pulls back to the waist, drive the other fist forward into the air with a reverse punch.

4. Return to the start. Count "block, punch" and repeat. Switch sides.

What helps: one arm goes out as the other comes back. Karate teachers call this pulling hand hikite; it balances the body like a seesaw.

Stay safe: into the air, at belly height. Stop short of locking the elbow.

The back kick, dwi chagi, is a signature taekwondo kick. It is powerful because it uses the large muscles of the hip and thigh in a straight line.

1. Stand sideways in a guard with space behind you.

2. Look over your back shoulder to see where you will kick.

3. Lift the kicking knee tight in front of you (the chamber).

4. Drive the heel straight back into the air at knee or belly height, toes pointing down.

5. Pull the knee back in and step down, turning back to face forward. Switch sides.

What helps: keep the kicking knee close to the standing knee as it passes, so the kick travels straight. Look before you kick.

Stay safe: check the space behind you first. Low and slow; hold a wall while learning.