It is generally accepted that the owners of black belts reached the top of skill in their form of martial arts. We checked if it was true.
When it turns out that a person known thanks to completely different merits has a black belt according to any Japanese or Korean martial art, this usually causes genuine respect. In the eyes of the public, this means that, outside his main profession, a person achieved if not a maximum, then something close to him. For example, the presidents of Russia and Mongolia (the latter has already left his post), if you believe Media, there are black belts on judo, ex-president of Lithuania Dalya Grybauskaite and famous football player Zlatan Ibragimovich have black belts on taekwondo, and the actor Stephen Sigal - According to Aikido. But sometimes you can find information that gives rise to doubts in the highest rank of attributes of this color. For example, when in the novel by Jan Fleming "You live only twice" James Bond asks the interlocutor about the successes in judo, he replies: “Just the Black Belt of the Seventh Dana. The red belt, this is from the eighth to the eleventh Dan, never received it. ”
The system of ranks in eastern martial arts originates in judo -Martial art created by the Japanese Dzigoro Cano in the 1880s based on Jiu-Jitsu. At first, the students of Kano fought in the usual traditional clothing of Kimono, tied with a wide belt of the Ob, which, upon reaching a certain skill, was replaced by white to black. In 1907, Kano introduced a special form - Judogs, however, still used belts of only two colors. Bely personified purity, and the black, its opposite, showed that the student took possession of knowledge. More than two decades will pass, and the founder of judo will decide to introduce additional colors for the classification of black belts, and in the meantime in Europe will already be actively use Other shades for differentiation of lower ranks.
First of all, it should be noted that a belt is only a visual, material demonstration of human achievements. It corresponds to one of the degrees that in judo and other Japanese martial arts divided On Kyu (Student) and Dana (workshops). In Korean martial art of Taekwondo, student degrees are called the word "GIP". All ranks of ranks have one common thing: the ranking of kyu (Gypov) is downward (in traditional judo - from the sixth to the first) as skill increases, and Danov - ascending (from the first and above). Exists legendAs if 12 Danov in judo, however, the 11th and 12th are not assigned to anyone, so as not to equate ordinary mortals to Dzigoro Kano, who reached both. In fact Cano did not have any degree in judo. Being the creator of the ranks system, he could not appropriate himself a given, and all the other judokas were his direct or indirect students, that is, they did not have similar powers. The number of Danes in judo, according to the covenants of the same cano, is unlimited, but the dumped above the tenth did not really receive.
So, back to the flowers. In Japan, where in judo there is traditionally there are six degrees of kyu, they use mainly white and brown colors, sometimes green (between them). In Europe, where the degrees of kyu are more often than ten, the flowers of student belts are also much larger. And, what is important, and there and there are given Designed Not only with a black belt:
As you can see, the owners of the Dan from the sixth to the eighth receive red and white belts, and those few who raised their skills to the ninth and tenth are red. At the same time, both in competitions prefer to put on a black belt, having the right to do so.
Similarly things are in traditional And Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where the upper gives are distinguished by a high share of red color with a difference only in small stripes. In karate Kyokusin (one of many varieties of this martial art) and Taekwondo As it increases, the number of gold stripes grow on the black belt. Other karate styles can combine Black-gold (lower Dana) and red-white (upper downs) belts in their system. But in the traditional aikido There are only three Danov, and the black belt corresponds to everyone. In Brazilian Capoeire With all the variety of belts (laces) systems, most often the highest level corresponds to ... white.
How often people get a “simple” black belt than more prestigious, it is easy to verify statistics Distribution of Dan in judo in the UK among men and women for 2018. As can be seen from the diagram, the ratio between Danas varies by orders of magnitude, and no one could climb above that year and could not: could not:
