Judo's Kano started the KeikoGi and Kyu Dan.

 Originally posted by Steven Malanosk 

But he got the idea, for the JuDoGi, from watching Chinese martial artists, practicing in their common clothes, and realized that the dress of the day, for the Japanese4 martial artist, was too constricting. 

Kind of a roundabout way, for the KeikoGi, to make its way to Okinawa. 

It's interesting how stories get started or from where they come. Much of the time, it does come from "sensei" and in many cases is just wrong. I was told, as a twelve-year-old that jujutsu was over two-thousand years old. At thirteen, I found better sources of information. 

I really do like the stories which spread such as the one above. Besides the above quote concerning the judogi and Chinese martial arts comes the dirty belt theory, amongst others. Interesting especially since the Chinese invented soap. It was brought to Europe by Marco Polo, presumably. 

However, Kano came up with the keikogi, one thing does persist about Kano. He was the first modern academic to truly study budo in an attempt to find the manner to express technique in the most efficient and least abusive manner. If this is true, then why would Kano have looked to China for the best in training clothes? Although for his time, he was probably a very liberal thinking man, taking note of most anything which would help him, he was, at that time, very much the patriot. 

 

The other story of the black belt was that when a student didn't have, or broke the sash which closed his dogi, Kano tore off a piece of his hakama bottom to make an "obi" for the student. There are many variations on this story, but this comes as close to Kano's "invention," the work-out clothes, including the black belt. 

Kano did not invent kyu grades in any manner. He did, though, call his very first beginning students Shodan for the more literal reason and put that on a scroll/certificate. The judogi wasn't done over- night, neither did the dan-I system of grading one's training level. Most likely, the kyu grade came along with the first dojo in the US, the Seattle Judo dojo, or just as likely, from Europe where almost certainly, the French Judo Federation under the direction of M. Kawaishi, along with other countries of Europe, came up with the multitude of colored belts we have now. Some say it was Mikonosuke Kawaishi's doing, but it did make its way from Europe in the 1950s. Whether a brown belt or even a kyu grade existed is much discussed in some books and articles, but they are guesses, at best. I asked a student of Kenneth Kuniyuki, one of the original students at the Seattle Judo dojo, about this, and he didn't know, and with Mr. Kuniyuki to be about 93 this year, an answer isn't likely to be forthcoming. When Kuniyuki moved to Southern California and found the Nanka Yudanshakai, the brown belt was probably being used, but only at Ikyu. 

Back to the judogi or keikogi. This first began with a jacket (uwagi) with short sleeves and any manner of shorts which was little more than underwear in many cases. The body was protected to a point, but the legs received mat burns as did the elbows, so longer pants came in which reached the knee, at first. Again an improvement but not nearly what is seen today. The pant was lengthened to protect the knee from mat burns and later padding was added which improved the protection to the knee. Meanwhile, the uwagi was being lengthened in the sleeve to just beyond the elbow where it stayed until a short time ago. I have the jackets I wore in the sixties and the sleeve did not extend much beyond the elbow even then, and as someone reminded me of recently "your arms are too short" which does give you an idea that perhaps I had a longer sleeve than did most. 

To sum up, the work-out gear took a relatively long while to arrive at what we have today. Pick up a double knit judogi and you can feel the weight. That is some weight, and for quality dogi today, one can easily spend over three-hundred dollars US. My first dogi was eleven dollars US. Add a colored belt, eg, black obi, the wider three-inch variety, and you can add another twenty easy, but Mizuno does ship its complete dogi with a white one and one-half inch obi, but at any particular size the 1 1/2-inch belt is about six to eight inches longer than the same size obi in the three-inch variety. That's one I don't understand, but in my early days, we dyed our belts. 

 

Kano may indeed have invented the dogi, but he almost always was to be found wearing hakama and kimono when teaching which were always black or dark colored, the opposite of the off-white, natural cotton colored judogi. By the 1920s, they were being sold seemingly factory made. While Kano would often pose in a dogi and black belt, that was the only color belt he ever "invented" or had anything to do with. The only other color was off-white, which became known to be worn by Mudansha, and there were only two grades of training, yudan and Mudan, and whichever number of dan grades one believes existed at any given time. Room was eventually made for 12-dan, but no one in judo, and by the Kodokan has ever been graded this high. Some have been graded to 10-dan posthumously, and a very few while still living. Someone else must be given the credit, or the blame for such kyu grades. As Kano never would stand in anyone's way if they were to add more colors, it makes the waters even murkier. As he said of Judo in the Olympic Games, "Judo is NOT a game, and I would not promote it as such, but neither will I 'stand' in anyone's way who chooses to do so. He was no longer an official with the IOC when he was quoted (Quotes are lacking in budo history. Mostly, they come hammered out as being "accurate" but the actual quotes are those of historians. History is opinionated if it is anything. One needs to do the research onself and attach the nearest meaning of what one finds. 

Nothing is ever as it seems. 

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Mark F. Feigenbaum