The Question of “Discrimination” in Japanese Martial Traditions

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.

This essay is one of many that has been revised to make the writing itself more graceful, but more importantly, to incorporate my own developing perspective on this subject. It is now part of my new book, Roots Still Cracking Rock: Refections On My First Fifty Years Within Classical Japanese Martial Traditions, which in addition to revised essays from this site, contains new work as well. Below you will find a picture of the cover as well as a QR code to order a Special Edition of the book. In this group order of ten books or more, Ran Network will make a special print-run with a dedication on the title page to your dojo or other institution. 

The general release of the book on Amazon (equal in quality of the binding) will be on approximately April 20th.  I will place that link here as well when it is ready.