Some time ago, I was sent a set of related questions on licensure and succession within koryū:
- What are your thoughts on koryū that predominantly only give out one menkyō kaiden, essentially declaring that person to be sōke. Would that mean the rest of the senior practitioners are not allowed to teach or open their own school, since they didn’t achieve the highest possible teaching license?
- What’s your thoughts on those who stay for decades, even though they would never receive a full teaching license, or how about other schools that might take a person thirty, forty or fifty years to get a license. Is it fair to a practitioner in one of these schools who, even though they have already learned and mastered everything there is to know, they are blocked from teaching? At the same time, they are unable to break away because they would lose legitimacy or recognition to be a certified instructor?
- How about those that face discrimination against them as foreigners, whether it is openly shown or not? In other cases, there’s clear favoritism, either to a family member, or to someone who plays the school’s political games–only Japanese people–or people the sōke or shihan likes–ever get promoted. What’s your thoughts on that?
In what follows, I address these questions as if talking to someone specific: “You.” I do not mean the person who asked the initial questions whom honestly, I don’t remember (it’s been three years since I received the questions). It’s a rhetorical device only.