Hanon wrote:
How's things with you? Mt reply to the OP was a sincere reply posing the question of value re certificate. I have absolutely zero problem with any one on the earth wearing any obi they wear, and rank they claim and any certificate they place on their wall. I have more certificates than you have in years and have never taken them out of the draw. Very few of those certificates mean something to me.
If any person desires to pay any association, club, federation or sensei their cash to be given a certificate it s absolutely their affair and is not even open for debate. My Only desire in replying to the OP was to sort of think outside the box.
As a personal point of view I cannot see the point in holding a kodokan dan rank certificate if I don't hold a kodokan rank. To me to hold a kodokan rank means I have actually been to the Kodokan, received lessons, taken part in the structure toward said exam and sat said exam in front of kodokan examiners. PLEASE do remember my age I am a dinosaur and what I hold dear to me will not be shared by others. Example: for ikyu I performed the randori no kata. That is how far back I go?
In the world of academia to the best of my knowledge neither of us could apply to Oxford for our certificates in our given subjects as we didn't study at Oxford? Maybe I am even wrong in that, I don't know?
One question. if it is as simple as sending money to the Kodokan to receive a certificate of dan rank of what moral value does that certificate have?
I would also feel it rather disingenuous to the person and federation, or whatever, who did examine me. I do accept 100% that these are my feelings and are not law!
I would never dream of calling myself a kodokan dan rank. I am not.
Keep well,
Mike
It's sometimes hard to see the wood for the threes due to distinctively different cultures, and just like judoka aren't very willing to read and learn, they aren't very willing to understand the situation from where someone is coming. When I first came to the US and joined a club, my sensei after some time promoted me to the same rank I was already holding abroad. That made sense. After several months I left and obviously continued training, teaching, attending clinics and living in various other countries. Thus when I returned many years later, my sensei couldn't just promote me to the rank I had by that time obtained during all those years abroad since it exceeded his authority. He said that to recommend me to the national promotion committee, he would need my rank certificate. I said: "my what ?" "Rank certificate" ? I had basically never heard or seen someone with a rank certificate in jûdô. Well, that is to say, I had once a long time ago in my home country seen an advertisement in the magazine of our national federation for Kodokan certificates, but I had never known or heard about anyone starting that procedures. It was very expensive, and obscure. The normal procedure like virtually everywhere else that I had seen was that when you do a shôdan shiken (dan rank exam), your new rank was simply signed off on your license, and later when you received your next license it was printed on there. That was it. I was one of the few who also had applied for a judo passport, so I had that too with my ranks signed off, and I also had a rank card (neither the passport nor the rank card were mandatory and most other people did not have these). Anyhow, where the heck would I get a "rank certificate" ? Where the heck would ANYBODY get a "rank certificate", which essentially was a kind of document that did not exist in our culture and countries. Did we get one in Japan ? Well, when I did my rank exam and was announced as "passed" I did what anyone would have done in our country and most countries I knew of, that is to hand over my license and rank card and passport to the administrator or chair of the exam board and have the rank signed off. I never asked for a rank certificate not even knowing such a thing existed, not inquiring if such was standard procedure, and thus not anticipating that maybe there was a local address we should have left for such a certificate to arrive later. I left Japan within days after, and never came back to my dôjô or met my sensei since. Anyhow, when I then got to a country where apparently anyone has these dramatic "rank certificates" nicely framed upon a wall, without me having any idea how they got them or what they had to do for those, it's even strange when you start perceiving that they actually think that this is how the situation is elsewhere and that we have or even "should have" such "rank certificates" too. In the end, my US sensei told me that the easiest way forward for me would be to obtain a Kôdôkan rank certificate.
So that is how I came in contact with this "Kôdôkan certificate" thing. I had no idea how to get it. The advertisement I had seen in a magazine in my country, dated back from the days I was a lowly kyû grade decades earier. I also knew that a long time ago, before obtaining shodan, nationally it had been possible to obtain direct Kôdôkan recognition for national dan-ranks due to the presence of a resident senior Kôdôkan sensei, but that was a long time ago. Of course, they have procedures to get such a rank in the US, but when you come from abroad that also meant you had a history that didnt look anything like that of other US judoka. You would not have any previous "rank certificates", not even any tangible local US history. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, in the end I did apply for such a Kôdôkan rank and had two meetings with Kôdôkan officials. I was proposed a relatively reasonable procedures that in any case an exam before a Kôdôkan jury was definitely part of it, which was exactly what I hoped, so I could demonstrate my knowledge and skill. I also spotted Kôdôkan officials a couple of times showing up during work-outs and during kata demonstrates just to watch what I was doing. In the end thanks to politics and the nastiness of what one meets in judo the process since has been pending for many, many years. In any case, I found it only normal that a formal exam would have been included, and I cannot imagine me willing to accept otherwise. However, maybe ... going back to your argument ... it's a matter of "delegating exam authority". I still "could" understand that. Where it gets really odd though is that in countries such as the US there usually ISN'T any formal exam before national grading board involved. In my home country we also use the terminology "doing a judo exam", but in the US they use an entirely different terminology, namely "getting promoted", which as an expression doesn't really exist in my country with regard to judo dan-ranks. There is a distinctive difference between both terms, namely that the first one implies a formal judo exam before a board, while the second term does not imply such a thing at all. It also appears that the chief instrument that is used for a "promotion in rank" (rather than for "doing a jûdô exam for a rank up") is filling out a form and paperwork. So, it appears actually possible in US culture to receive consecutive higher jûdô ranks without any formal exam before a board. If in this case --and that appears how it is-- Kôdôkan upon recommendation of the US Kôdôkan Committee can decide to recognize the rank, then indeed one would receive a Kôdôkan rank and Kôdôkan certificate without any exam involved. This is distinctively different though from how it was a long time ago in my country before I was a black belt. Even though you could then directly (upon paying an additonial and rather hefty fee) have your rank homologated with the Kôdôkan, every single person had to do a formal exam and the Kôdôkan representative presided the exam board hence literally examining you himself.
This brings me back to the issues you raise, that in a sense there appear to be two tracks to obtain a Kôdôkan rank/certificate, namely the one with exam and formal assessment and the one with no exam involved at all, just paperwork and hard cash. But one can't choose which procedure. The procedure is imposed and different depending on your country and citizenship and probably other things. The rationale that seems to underpin either procedure is merely historic and cultural.
You think this is all weird ? You know what I think is weird ? That when you tell some people that there do not exist any rank certificates that either they don't believe you their main argument being ... "because they themselves (in a totally different country) have one". Right. And all countries express temperature in Fahrenheit, and drive to the other side of the street, use stone or pounds to express weight, etc too ? To me it is extremely strange that anyone would ask you for something without first asking if something like that even exists in your country. And yet, that's reality.
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A certificate of good health on your wall is what I would love to see. I bet your family feel the same....
