What makes a Master?

[skribs]

So what does everyone think about people with relatively little time in an art or who are of a relatively young age, but are considered masters by their peers. Reading and researching karate, youll find examples of this from "the olden days". Arikaki died in his twenties- Funakoshi considered him a master. Youll also find examples of so and so was a master of X art, that person then trained B art under so and so and after four years mastered that art.......

Someone who started at 4 and has done this for 20 years has been doing this their whole life, since their brain was in its most developmental stages.

In BJJ, the most difficult weight class is adult: age 18-29. If you're in your 30s or older you get put into higher and higher age groups called Master 1, Master 2, etc. (In this case, the title has nothing to do with mastery, as Professor is the title used in BJJ).

I, as a Master 2 player (age 36-40), can go into the Master 1 or Adult brackets for a more difficult competition, but I can't go into Master 3 or higher because it would be unfair.

 

[isshinryuronin]

We should note the Arikaki (Arigaki) you are mentioning is Ankichi A., not the long-lived (and even more famous) Arigaki Seisho who taught Funakoshi (Shotokan creator) and Mabuni (shito-ryu creator).

Ankichi may be considered a prodigy, starting his karate as a child and learning from the some of the most renown masters in Okinawa such as Kyan, Chibana and Hanashiro. He may have died young but probably had close to 18 years in the art, likely training hours each day. Put this all together and you have a very good martial artist.

Don't know if Funakoshi called him a master (he might have) or if he was referring to his teacher, Seisho. Certainly, Ankichi would have been called "master" by his student, Nagamine Shoshin.