I saw a rank called Shodan in a martial arts game. Also I started to search what that is. And I found a verry nice article at wikipedia and some at matrial arts school websites.

I found info about the dan black belts and about Master/Granmaster belt. For example, master belts are reached by the matrial art founders - "Bruce Lee's was a Master belt of Jet Kune Doo"

Also im ATM a Sandan at toribash.

Japan ranks:
Many arts use between one and ten dan ranks:
shodan (初段:しょだん): first degree black belt (technically, shodan is "beginning degree" and ichidan is "first degree"; the latter term is less commonly used)
nidan (二段:にだん): 2nd dan black belt
sandan (三段:さんだん): 3rd dan black belt
yondan (四段:よだん): 4th dan black belt
godan (五段:ごだん): 5th dan black belt
rokudan (六段:ろくだん): 6th dan black belt
shichidan (七段:ななだん): 7th dan black belt (also, nanadan)
hachidan (八段:はちだん): 8th dan black belt
kyūdan (九段:きゅうだん): 9th dan black belt
jūdan (十段:じゅうだん): 10th dan black belt

Korean ranks
Il dan (일단): first degree black belt (also known as cho dan (초단 hanja: 初段))
Yi dan (이단): second degree black belt
Sam dan (삼단): third degree black belt
Sa dan (사단): fourth degree black belt
O dan (오단): fifth degree black belt
Yuk dan (육단): sixth degree black belt
Chil dan (칠단): seventh degree black belt
Pal dan (팔단): eight degree black belt
Gu dan (구단): ninth degree black belt




Also found info that there are only 7 10th dan black belts at judo.

Source: wiki, google, matrial school website


Discuss (your rank, info about xth dan belt masters,etc...)

A very long time ago we used to have the Japanese names as our "Posting Glory" titles, as Junior and Senior Member are now, so most of the oldschoolers should know about these things.

Most likely the things before dan is the number in that language.

bring that back, heck yeah.

suomynona
that was before may 2008, or?

Bloobing,
you mean "dan" is translated from Japaneesse to ENG as "number"?

SuicideDo
yea that would be nice

He says that the word BEFORE "dan" is a number in the respected language

ie. ni = 2. nidan = 2nd dan blackbelt.

Do Tori and Uke have their own language?

oooh, what about 1-10 in binary? XD

It was at the SMF->vB switch, so some time not that long after my join date. I might be able to find it, but I'd have to open up my extremely old IRC logs to do so. It's a long time ago.

It was before my join date, I have no recollection of it. Then again i never used the forums or IRC when i first joined.

Cool stuff though bro

i STILL dont use IRC.... i've been meaning to check that out, but... meh... you know what? i really dont care. IRC compared to the forums? probably just more rapid presentation of the same crap...