Belt Wraping: The Tradition of Pride and Humility by: Jeffery Day

 

Most people believe that pride and humility are direct opposites. They spend their martial arts lives wrapped up in attaining one or the other but never both. Some would even go as far as to say that the two could not possibly exist together. But each time I unwrap my belt, the ritual reminds me that pride and humility in the martial arts go hand-in-hand.

To explore the origin of this tradition of belt wrapping, we should go back to the place and time of it's birth, Okinawa, sometime in the 1700's. Picture yourself as one of the earliest students of karate. Your Sensei could have been one of the founding father's, such as Bushi Matsumura or Karate Sakugawa. You would have trained more out of necessity than want. Your training uniform would have been more like the clothes that you wore daily, instead of a uniform that is associated with karate training today. Your Sensei would have been more with training you to save your life in a real combat situation than he would have been with keeping you and your dues around to pay the dojo rent. In short he would have trained you into the ground, kicked your behind on a regular basis and not given a rat's whisker whether or not you returned the next night.

After a gruelling session of training, you would have thanked your Sensei and readied yourself for a midnight stroll home. Since your training probably would have been done in secrecy, you would have rolled your obi into your furoskiki (a common carry-all used in those days) and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible for your walk. Those who have spent time in Okinawa know first hand that it is a very hot and humid place. When training there, you perspire profusely. If you had trained hard, your obi would have been soaked with sweat when you wrapped it up at the end of the evening training.

A sweat filled obi wrapped up in a furoshiki does a peculiar thing when it sit's around for a while in a humid climate. It gets very mouldy after a few months. So back in Okinawa, you would have unrolled you obi one night after many months of hard training, only to find that it was moulded and turning green. And you can bet your Sensei would have noticed, too. Be assured that this did not happen quickly or easily. There was also no definite point of change. You did not come to test one night as a fifth kyu, and leave as a fourth kyu. You just went home with a slightly mouldier belt. It was a slow process. But bit by bit it did turn green and your Sensei knew that you had been around for a while.

Night after night you return to train. Again and again, your Sensei or your Sempai would slam you into the dirt. Your obi would be ground into the dirt floor training area and you would wrap it each night, a little sweatier and a little dirtier. And each night at the beginning of a new training session you would have opened it to find it a bit mouldier. Can you guess what happens when layers of green mould dies? You're right; it turns brown. And at this point, you were becoming a brown belt. Of course the process to this point took a few years at the least. It had nothing to to do with paying dues or winning tournaments. Each night during your training session, Sensei would take note of all the obi's and decide which were the dirtiest and the mouldiest. At the end of the training, he would then line up the students by rank according to this observation.

The condition of the obi not only proclaimed you time and experience in training, but how much you had hit the dirt as well. Thus, you, as a student, could have pride in the fact that you had continued training long enough for it to show in your belt. At the same time, you would feel humbled in the fact that the dirt in your belt proved that you have been thrown to the ground by your seniors many times before. It is in this manner that pride and humility co-exist. At this point, you may be wondering what all this has to do with keeping your belt wrapped up in a furoshiki today. You may ask, "Why should we keep such an archaic ritual alive?" It is because of the word "sincerity" listed in the Dojo Kun ( Be Sincere or Be Faithful ). If your sensei looks at your obi and sees much dirt and sweat, he knows that you have been training long and hard. But what if the majority of that dirt did not get on your belt during actual training? Then you are giving a false representation of your training and your experience to your Sensei and fellow Karate-ka. Therefore in an effort to keep the Dojo Kun, you must protect your obi from dirt when you are not training. This means that as soon as you have stopped your training session, you should wrap your belt in the forushiki. This brings up another question, "Should you wash your belt?" The answer is absolutely not! To wash your belt is to wash away the symbol of your experience. In the old days, good Japanese belts were made to fall apart if washed. This ment that if you washed your belt, you had to start the process all over again with a new belt.

Since the belt is a symbol of one's experience, it should be treated with care and respect. It should not be dragged on the floor, left to lie around in locker rooms or the back seats of cars. It is also considered rude to touch another person's belt without their permission. Students must never wear their obi till they have entered the Dojo and they must remove it and wrap it before leaving. If a Karate-Ka leaves their belt behind or lying around out of the wrap, the student looses the belt until the Sensei sees fit to give it back.

The great Karate master Gichin Funakoshi writes in his book "Karate-Do My Way of Life" of an altercation he had one evening while walking home. He tells of a man who attacked him on the street and tried to rob him. The robber demanded for Funakoshi Sensei to hand over his furoshiki (Carry-all). The master said that all he had in the furoshiki was an empty lunch box and some books. Nevertheless, master Funakoshi chose to physically subdue his assailant (poor guy) rather than hand it over. Given the none-violent philosophy of the great master, it makes one wonder what he really had inside his furoshiki.

The above is an excerpt of Sensei Jeffery Day's article "The Tradition Of Pride & Humility"

If a Karate-Ka has sincerely (with sweat and spirit) earned their belt in our Dojo where they've had to block, kick, strike and punch in a hard/fast-style (Go Suko-Ryu) and never given up. Then you would certainly not want to lose or treat your obi with disrespect because you have honestly earned the right to wear it. Remember a belt is just a belt until it is given a Karate-Ka then it becomes an obi and the more you train the greater meaning this will have.