有段者 yūdansha Black Belt
有段者 (yūdansha) is a holder of a dan grade, a rank the go houses set in the late seventeenth century. The word is in print by 1888, and the Kōdōkan used it of its members by 1894. This study follows it into English in 1913, and asks why the word names the rank and not the belt.
Abstract
有段者, yūdansha, is a Meiji word for a holder of a dan grade, a rank the go houses set in the late seventeenth century and the jūjutsu and jūdō halls took up in the 1880s. It is in print by 1888, used of the Kōdōkan's members by 1894 and a dictionary headword by 1915, long before the national dictionary's own 1935 first citation. The word entered English in 1913, when a Kōdōkan teacher explained to a visiting journalist that the yūdansha are the ones allowed to wear black belts; the belt was the sign of the word from its first appearance in print, but the word itself names the rank, not the belt.
Overview
The sense. Standard; a technical word of budō, go and shōgi, in print by 1888 and in the dictionaries by 1915. A person who holds a dan grade, shodan or above; the belt is the sign, the word is the rank. Its entry says so in its first clause: in budō, go, shōgi and the like, a person who holds a dan grade; shodan and above [1]. The 大辞泉 gives 段位 as the rank expressing skill in jūdō, kendō, go, shōgi and the like, above 級 [1]. So the word does not say black belt. It says ranked, in the sense a go player is ranked.
The words. 有 is to have, 段 is a dan, a grade of skill, and 者 is a person: one who has a dan. The whole word hangs on 段, and 段 belonged to the board games before it belonged to the dōjō.
The text in English. The English the house sells it under is the sign a visitor saw on the mat. Black belt is what a yūdansha wears, and the 1913 sentence Harrison reports from Yokoyama is the place the two are joined in English: the black belt is a sign, the yūdansha is the person. JMdict gives holder of a dan rank first, then dan player (in go or shogi) and black belt (in martial arts) [2]; the house glosses the word as black belt, which is right for what a buyer means and loose for what the word says, and its page glosses 段 itself as dan (black belt) rank, which is true in the dōjō and not on the go board. What a rendering must keep is the rank: dan holder, ranked; the belt may follow in brackets.
The historical record
The late seventeenth century, the grade. The dan grades are go's. The dictionaries credit Hon'inbō Dōsaku 本因坊道策 (1645–1702), fourth head of the Hon'inbō house, with establishing the grading, 段位制を確立し; in the Edo period the seventh dan of go and shōgi was called 上手, and the ninth, 名人, alone could hold the office of 碁所, which issued the licences [3]. The national dictionary's oldest quotation for 初段, first dan, as a grade comes much later, from Shikitei Sanba 式亭三馬's comic book 『古今百馬鹿』 of 1814, a book of fools, in a passage on go and shōgi players that takes the grades for granted: among those called by so many dan, from first dan up, there is never a quarrel [1].
1883, the Kōdōkan. Kanō Jigorō introduced dan ranks for jūdō in 1883 [4], borrowing the idea of dan ranks from the grading system introduced in the board game Go during the early Tokugawa period; those who passed first dan were allowed to wear black sashes [5].
1888, a jūjutsu school. The earliest known use of the word is in an English conversation book of 1888. A dialogue on a school it calls 隈元振氣流, a style of fencing and jūjutsu, says of its pupils: 其門弟ハ練達ニ因リ黒帶肩章ヲ附シ有段者タルヲ表シ第三十段ニ至テ卒業スル事ニ成リ居リマス, as they gain skill, his pupils put on the black belt and the shoulder stripe to show that they are 有段者, and on reaching the thirtieth dan they graduate. The English on the facing line reads his students wear white clothes with a black stripe and a black waist band [6]. The word and the belt are together from the start, and the English gives the belt without the word.
1894, the Kōdōkan's two kinds. A magazine report of a jūdō demonstration and the ceremony that followed it, 右終りて有段者へ證書授與の式あり, after this there was a ceremony conferring certificates on the 有段者, explains the word: 有段者とは、修行の成績により、講道館員を、有段者、無段者の二種に分ち, by their progress in training, the Kōdōkan divides its members into two kinds, 有段者 and 無段者 [7]. By 1897 the sporting press uses it of jūdō bouts without explanation: 有段者勝負, the bouts of the 有段者 [8].
1907, Keiō's jūdō club. The fiftieth-anniversary history of Keiō counts the jūdō club's members as 有段者廿餘名、有級者八十餘名, twenty-odd 有段者, eighty-odd 有級者, in a club that learned 講道館嘉納流の柔道, the jūdō of the Kōdōkan's Kanō school [9].
1914, go. It is used of go players without explanation, a professional's dan being another matter from an amateur's, which has a handicap in it [10].
1915, and 1922, the dictionaries. By 1915 the 『大日本国語辞典』 has it as a headword, in jūdō and the like, shodan and above, which the 『言泉』 of 1922 widens to jūdō, go, shōgi [11]. The national dictionary's own first citation is 1935 (北条清一『武州このごろ記』, he does not look like a jūdō 有段者) [1], forty-seven years after the word is in print. Advertisements for jūdō manuals in 1914 and 1922 put 嘉納 and the 有段者 masters on one line, and that is where the word's dōjō weight comes from [12].
The 1920s and 1930s. In the National Diet Library's full text, in books printed before 1947, it rises through the 1920s and peaks in the 1930s, when every school had a kendō and a jūdō hall [13].
1923. A Shintō lecturer uses it as a plain figure, whether a duffer or a 有段者, both are go players [14].
The word in English
1913, Harrison. In English the word came in with jūdō, and the earliest known use is in E. J. Harrison's The Fighting Spirit of Japan (1913), by a journalist who trained at the Kōdōkan. The sentence that joins the word to the belt is not Harrison's own but Yokoyama Sakujirō's, a seventh dan reminiscing over dinner, whom Harrison reports: of some thirteen thousand Kōdōkan pupils, the proportion of yudansha, who are allowed to wear black belts as a sign of efficiency, is about 1,200. Harrison's own observation is of stature: several of the yudansha, or teachers, were scarcely more than 5 ft. high—though many were, of course, far taller, and toppled opponents however big [15].
1914, Terry. A guidebook for travellers, describing the Kanō school, gives the Kōdōkan's two kinds as classes of a college: Students are either graduates (yudansha, or 'those with grades'), and under-graduates (mudansha, or 'those without grades') [16].
1946, and 1952, and 1955. The Budokwai's bulletin in London glosses it in 1946 as holder of "Dan" grade, and Harrison's manual of 1952 as holder of a Dan (grade, rank, degree); his 1955 edition gives the pair: mudansha or non-dan, and dan-holders are called yudansha [17].
1964, kendō. The word followed the other arts into English: a kendō manual seats the beginners opposite the yudansha (higher grade holders) [18]. The Japanese-English dictionaries give it as a grade holder [19].
Today. The dictionaries give it of anyone with a dan in budō, go or shōgi [1], and titles of the last fifty years use it that way, of go, shōgi, kyūdō, naginata, kendō and jūdō players alike [20]. The house sells it as Black Belt; the word says one who holds a dan, and the belt is its sign in the dōjō only.
A reading
Black Belt is the English the word has carried since 1913, and it is right for what an English speaker means. What the word says is one who holds a dan, a grade the go houses made in the seventeenth century and the jūjutsu and jūdō halls took up in the 1880s. The belt was its sign on the mat from the first book that prints the word, and it is the sign a Kōdōkan teacher named to a foreign visitor in 1913 and English has said ever since. A player with a dan in go is a yūdansha as fully as a jūdōka, and the word knows it.
References
- 「有段者」・「初段」・「段位」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/有段者
- JMdict, 有段者, at Jisho. https://jisho.org/word/有段者
- 「本因坊道策」, デジタル大辞泉・ブリタニカ国際大百科事典・百科事典マイペディア・日本人名大辞典+Plus; 「上手」 and 「碁所」, 精選版日本国語大辞典; at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/本因坊道策 · https://kotobank.jp/word/上手 · https://kotobank.jp/word/碁所
- John Stevens, The Way of Judo: A Portrait of Jigoro Kano and His Students, Shambhala, 2013, the section Kodokan Guidelines.
- Alexander C. Bennett, Kendo: Culture of the Sword, University of California Press, 2015, p. 6.
- 稲垣才三郎, 英語対話演習書, 1888, pp. 128–129, scan 68. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871298/1/68
- 少年園, June 1894 (the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1784301
- 運動界, July 1897 (the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1527010
- 慶応義塾五十年史, 1907, p. 390, scan 228. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/812742/1/228
- 大町桂月, 日本男児論, 1914, scan 155. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/933627/1/155
- 上田万年・松井簡治, 大日本国語辞典, 1915, p. 183, scan 104; 落合直文, 言泉, 1922, scan 103. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954645/1/104 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/969159/1/103
- 山崎延吉, 農民教育, 1914, scan 201 (advertisement). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/980194/1/201
- NDL Digital Collections, full text, 有段者, oldest first, to 1946; the counts by decade are held in the research record. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=有段者&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
- 田中義能, 神道講演, 1923, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971061/1/19
- E. J. Harrison, The Fighting Spirit of Japan, T. Fisher Unwin, 1913, pp. 59–60, 89. https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.91404
- T. Philip Terry, Terry's Japanese Empire, Houghton Mifflin, 1914, p. clxvii. https://archive.org/details/terrysjapaneseem00terr
- The Budokwai, Judo Quarterly Bulletin 2.2, July 1946; E. J. Harrison, The Manual of Judo, 1952; E. J. Harrison, The Fighting Spirit of Japan, 1955 ed. https://archive.org/details/the-manual-of-judo · https://archive.org/details/fightingspiritof0000harr
- Junzo Sasamori and Gordon Warner, This Is Kendo, Charles E. Tuttle, 1964. https://archive.org/details/thisiskendoartof00sasa
- Koh Masuda (ed.), Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyusha, 1974, 有段者.
- CiNii Research, 有段者. https://cir.nii.ac.jp/all?q=有段者