How come ?

[Twin Fist]

Your recollection is wrong. Master Urban received his "Tenth Degree" from the Budokukai (an examining board of well respected high ranking members) under "Grandmaster" Richard Kim with the blessings of O'Sensi Yamaguchi (founder of Go Ju).

not quite

Yamaguchi wasnt the FOUNDER of goju

That was Chogun Miyagi


as to wether or not he self promoted, so what?

Chow self promoted

the founders ALL self promoted, or got thier buddies to promote them.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I
Indeed, I suspect that there must be some such incidents in the JMA and CMA too.

:jaw-dropping: In CMA …. NEVER :angry:…oh wait :uhohh:…I already said it did:duh:…didn’t I

My first Sifu who once told me that he could not be a grandmaster now claims to be a grand master of 20 some odd styles and in the US he gets away with it... In China he would be thought of only as a gym teacher.

My Taijiquan Sifu absolutely will not let anyone call him a grandmaster. You call him Sifu or by his first name. In China he would be considered a Taiji Sifu form a very good lineage. He absolutely does not understands how my first Sifu has the nerve to take the title of Grandmaster. But then per my taiji Sifu the only grandmasters he ever knew of in China where dead guys. If they were alive you never called them grandmaster.

My Sanda Sifu who could be a Sanda Sifu in china does not want to be called Sifu or grandmaster and he just calls my first Sifu's wushu huā quán xìu tǔi. Basically it means pretty so look at but it’s a dance.. the not so nice "Flower Fist" comment

 

[Cryozombie]

the founders ALL self promoted, or got thier buddies to promote them.

Sorry, TF, I need clarification of this point... are you speaking Generally... All founders self promoted, or were you speaking of a specific art/arts?

 

[Twin Fist]

well, think it through

if i found a style, then I am in effect MAKING myself a 10th Dan, or the equivelent.

Norris made himself a 10th when he founded the UFAF
Parker made himself a 10th dan
Chow made himself a 10th dan, then a 15th dan
Urban got his buddies to do it
Moses Powell made himself a 10th
Helio Gracie made himself a 10th
Mas Oyama made himself a 10th dan
Tak Kobuta made himself a 10th dan


the trick is, how many founders were 10th degrees BEFORE they founded thier system?

for that matter, since we KNOW the "Dan" system really only goes back to the 30's. The so called "first gen" blackbelts out of japan and okinawa ranked themselves.

 

[seasoned]

You guy’s are making it all sound trivial and worthless. It is all psychobabble, and it is no wonder that a good amount of the people think that MA is bull crap. There are a lot of details that go into calling yourself a master or founder. All the ground work has been laid for styles, and titles have been given, many, many years ago, so get over it.

 

[Flying Crane]

You guy’s are making it all sound trivial and worthless.

often, it is.

It is all psychobabble,

yup, unfortunately the martial arts often has a good dose of this as well.

and it is no wonder that a good amount of the people think that MA is bull crap.

and often, they are right.

There are a lot of details that go into calling yourself a master or founder. All the ground work has been laid for styles, and titles have been given, many, many years ago,

sometimes. often, not so.
Titles given? Given by whom? What makes them qualified to give titles?

so get over it.

personally, I'm not hung up over it. What's there to get over?

 

[seasoned]

[/size]
often, it is.


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yup, unfortunately the martial arts often has a good dose of this as well.


[/size]
and often, they are right.


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sometimes. often, not so.
Titles given? Given by whom? What makes them qualified to give titles?


personally, I'm not hung up over it. What's there to get over?

Mr. Flying Crane, thank you for responding. It seems we agree on most of my points. The ones that seem to be in question are “Titles given? Given by whom? What makes them qualified to give titles“?
In this thread the discussion vacillates between eastern and western. Some very good points have been made about how we got to the state of MA, we are in today, pertaining to super high titles and also, a validity issue. Some say titles given to oriental’s are given more credibility then titles given to westerners. This makes sense, because the foundations of MA, were generated from east to west, so credibility is assumed. I feel that the biggest issue at hand is the fact, that once any concept or idea hits our shore, and free market takes over, it lends itself to, greed, and large ego. After all, isn’t bigger always better? Lets talk about foundations and beginning, and see where this all started, so we can wonder, at where it is today. Foundations were set by greats like Kanryo Higaonna, and Chojun Miyagi, and the biggest title they were ever given were that of “teacher”. Which translates into “one who leads the way”. A simple title like Sensei is all that was put after there name. This alone was enough to carry their name and there art to this day. You were one of two things, teacher or student. Who gave you the title of “teacher” or “Sensei”? That’s easy, it was given, not taken, based on, ability, honesty and integrity, stemming from a good heart. Once while Masanobu Shinjo Sensei was visiting the states, he was asked what Karate meant to him. He simply pointed to his heart. It is in this simplicity, and humbleness that true strength comes from. There will always be someone that needs all the frills and fanciness, that simply draws attention to themselves. And then, thankfully there are those who chose a simpler path, a more traditional path.

 

[YoungMan]

It is not true that creating your own style automatically makes you 10th Dan in it. Every style founder I ever heard of, who had legitimately created a style )and they are few and far between), earned their rank elsewhere. Won Kuk Lee, the founder of Tang Soo Do, never claimed 10th Dan in that style. My old Yoshokai grandmaster, despite being the founder of Yoshokai aikido, never claimed to be a 10th Dan in Yoshokai.
Even if I created my own style, I would never claim 10th Dan in it. I would use my Taekwondo rank as a reference and state this is what I teach now.
For the record, I've only met one guy (American, surprise surprise!) who founded his own organization and claimed 10th Dan in it. But he's a joke.

 

[tshadowchaser]

My thought on the original question :

If a person has trained over half or 3/4ths of their live and they are in their 50’s and decide to incorporate all of their knowledge under the banner of a new system let them. That is if they are truly a master in one of the arts and have been studying tha style the majority of their life with other studies included over the years.
The style will grow or fail with time and that will be the judge of if it worked for others.

 

[Twin Fist]

It is not true that creating your own style automatically makes you 10th Dan in it. Every style founder I ever heard of, who had legitimately created a style )and they are few and far between), earned their rank elsewhere.

Norris made himself a 10th when he founded the UFAF
Parker made himself a 10th dan
Chow made himself a 10th dan, then a 15th dan
Urban got his buddies to do it
Moses Powell made himself a 10th
Helio Gracie made himself a 10th
Mas Oyama made himself a 10th dan
Tak Kobuta made himself a 10th dan

so, are those guys jokes?

or do they prove you wrong?

not to mention
Ralph Castro
Sijo Emperaldo
Bill Ryusaki

The thing is, when you create a new style, you almost HAVE to self promote.

Think it through, sooner or later your students will need to get promoted. That means you have to be high enough rank to promote them.

The fact is that the type of large org you come from YM is the exception, rather than the rule.

 

[Sukerkin]

I think yourself and YM are saying different things, TF rather than actually being at loggerheads.

You are pointing out some prominent example of people who gave themselves rank by fiat whereas he is saying that all the legitimate 'founders' he's heard of earned their rank the old-fashioned way.

By the way, other than Mr. Norris and Mr. Parker, the others appeared to have been wasting their time making themselves martal arts gods because I've never heard of them .

Lineage, legitimacy and having a 'good name' matters, or at least it does to me. I wouldn't countenance being taught by someone who declared themselves Master of an Art. Self-praise is no praise at all :lol:. Maybe it's because I'm English and therefore from a society that is more inherently hierarchical than America?

 

[Twin Fist]

you have never heard of:

William Chow -ed parkers teacher
Peter Urban -founded american goju ryu
Moses Powell -founded suances ryu jujitsu
Helio Gracie -founded gracie jujitsu
Mas Oyama -founded kukoshin kai karate
Tak Kobuta -founded gosoku ryu karate
Ralph Castro -founded shaolin keNpo
Sijo Emperaldo -founded kajukenbo
Bill Ryusaki -founded hawaian Kenpo

?

well, thats ok. If you dont study one of those styles and are not a MA history buff like i am, there is no reason why you would have.

Hell, look at me, I dont teach pure TKD, or pure kenpo, but an amalgam of both.

now I dont consider myself a founder, I am just doing it the way i find the most effective, rather like the "Method" thing in kaju that was discussed upthread.

And trust me, lineage matters to me too, in fact it gets me in trouble sometimes. Like one time i was asked by a friend to help him test one of his students for her kenpo BB. I asked her to recite her lineage back to Mitose.

 

[Sukerkin]

Indeed, I'll go further than that and say that I've never heard of their arts either, other than kenpo in a general way.

As I've spoken of before, my study of history was professional rather than personal, altho' I have travelled certain roads of my own interest (such as Japanese history) for decades.

I have not made a general study of the history martial arts in the way that you seem to have done and I'll openly admit to a good deal of snobbery when it comes to arts that were not founded centuries ago, which has further closed my eyes to things that may be common knowledge to others {}. So thank you for filling in the blanks a little, so to speak.

 

[Twin Fist]

it's all good mark. I am just a MA history buff, so i have looked lots of stuff up. Plus, while i was in the military, i moved around a lot, so i got to try different styles and schools

 

[Xue Sheng]

Lineage, legitimacy and having a 'good name' matters, or at least it does to me. I wouldn't countenance being taught by someone who declared themselves Master of an Art. Self-praise is no praise at all :lol:. Maybe it's because I'm English and therefore from a society that is more inherently hierarchical than America?

Nope, it's not just the English.. I'm American....but then I train CMA and am married into a Chinese family so maybe I look at things different

 

[YoungMan]

I don't care who you are; declaring yourself to be 10th Dan is bad form. Someone else has to give you rank, even if it's posthumously.

 

[BrandonLucas]

I don't care who you are; declaring yourself to be 10th Dan is bad form. Someone else has to give you rank, even if it's posthumously.

I agree, and I've never understood how someone can award you a rank posthumously...wouldn't that leave someone rather incapable of doing...well...anything?

Not only that, but I think what doesn't look so good is, for instance, a guy who wants to create his own style, that, for the sake of argument, actually has a valid reason for creating one. We'll say that he's doing a mixture of TKD, Kenpo, and several CMA's that he's studied for many years.

Well, out of all the arts he's studied, the highest rank that he's earned is a 4th degree blackbelt, we'll say in TKD.

How, then, is it that he can combine all his other arts and magically come up with 10th dan in his own art? How does one come up with the correct number?

Wouldn't it be more realistic to say that you're the teacher of the system, and that you're simply a blackbelt? You can instruct others to achieve a black belt in your system, but they would always be considered lower rank than you since they're your students learning your style. If you don't promote someone past the level of blackbelt, then you don't have to worry about what dan you are...just get rid of the dan system all together. I don't think they should be needed outside of the arts and systems that already employ that method, myself...and it would avoid all of the bickering about how "qualified" someone is.

 

[YoungMan]

I think a better approach is to simply state your held rank, declare what you are teaching, and go from there. At least that's honest. It's also a lot better if you start off as a very senior instructor in another art. I'd be very leery of a 4th Dan who was teaching his own self created style. There's still so much you don't know in your base art.

 

[Twin Fist]

I'd be very leery of a 4th Dan who was teaching his own self created style. There's still so much you don't know in your base art.

please dont apply your situation to everyone else. As has already been discussed and shown, even having material to learn after BB is a recent (last 40 years) development.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I don't care who you are; declaring yourself to be 10th Dan is bad form. Someone else has to give you rank, even if it's posthumously.

OK, but is it ok to declare myself lord high omnipotent grandmaster and evil wizard of Xuefu