History tells us the modern belt system was created by the founder of judo to be used by other instructors to know at what level the student was in order to teach the appropriate techniques.

  At first, there was just a white belt and 5 degrees of blackbelt , the first belts awarded were to Tomiki and Shiro Saigo, but soon there were hundreds wearing rank belts, then, they decided to award various colored belts for those under 16, (yellow, orange, green, blue and brown colors) and they added 5 extra degrees of blackbelts, and that system was used by everyone until the mid 1960's.

 By the mid 30's, the belt system was firmly entrenched and was used by karate and a few other  Japanese martial arts.

 Today, the belt system is diverse and has no common value, a shodan in one art, might be a sandan in another, and there is this fad to use it as a way to draw attention to the belt holder by adding rows and rows of strips, athough, if one is in a system, everyone would know what rank each hold without this billboard approach.

  The Black Belt registrations are not awards of these ranks by our sponsor ! They are registration and licensing of these ranks, regardless if they are not compatible with similar ranks in other arts, but there are conditions that must be followed, and if they are, students, organizations and schools will see your name and rank, plus style, listed in our black belt section,  as fullly licensed and registered, if these conditions are not met, your name will be removed from our site.