有段者 yūdansha Black Belt
This is a philological study of the Japanese word 有段者 (yūdansha), black belt. It spans the record from a 1814 comic book about go and shōgi players, through a 1907 history of Keiō's jūdō club and the dictionaries that took the word up by 1915, to a journalist's 1913 account of a Kōdōkan teacher explaining the black belt to a foreign visitor, and it examines why the word itself names a rank rather than a belt.
Abstract
有段者, yūdansha, is a Meiji word for a holder of a dan grade, borrowed from go and shōgi into jūdō and kendō. It is in print by 1907 and a dictionary headword by 1915, well 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 is the sign the word carried into English, 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 1907 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 and the house both gloss the word as black belt, which is right for what a buyer means and loose for what the word says; the house's 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
1814, the origin of the grade. The 日国's oldest citation for 初段, first dan, as a grade is a comic book of 1814 about go and shōgi players [1].
1907, Keiō's jūdō club. The dictionaries' 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]. The word is older than that in print by twenty-eight years: the fiftieth-anniversary history of Keiō (1907) counts the jūdō club's members as twenty-odd 有段者, eighty-odd 有級者 [2].
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 [3].
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 [4]. 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 [5].
The 1920s and 1930s. In the archive it rises through the 1920s and peaks in the 1930s, when every school had a kendō and a jūdō hall [6].
1923. A Shintō lecturer uses it as a plain figure, whether a duffer or a 有段者, both are go players [7].
The word in English
1913, Harrison. In English every known use is jūdō's, and the earliest 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 [8].
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 [9].
Today. Of anyone with a dan: a jūdōka, a kendōka, a karateka, a go or shōgi player. It has no register but the technical; nothing religious or moral attaches to it.
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 term the board games made and the dōjō borrowed, in print by 1907; the sign of it on the mat is the belt 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
- 慶応義塾五十年史, 1907, 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, 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
- A local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized prewar books, searched on the word; the counts are held in the research record.
- 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, 1913, pp. 59–60, 89. https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.91404
- 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