Friday, September 4, 2009

Did the women make the men's black belts?

I recently learned that in Korea there are women who knit though not as much nowadays as in the past. I was wondering something. In the old days before things were mass produced, the men who were martial artists, who made their belts? Did the women knit them?


if by knit you mean loom then yes possibly but originally remember they only made whiteish ones the black belt concept came from the belt becoming filthy with age

No idea who made them but the belts worn in the old days were commercially available everywhere. The modern obi is nothing new but rather a scaled down version of the origional belts that were used to hold the gi top, or kimono top closed. The modern belts are not as wide and not nearly as long as the origional ones.

I have my Sensei's belt which he was given from his father to wear. It was produced in 1912 and it is about 3" wide and about 22" longer than the black belt I wear. What is interesting is that it is faded, worn and tattered but yet you can tell it was hand stitched because the lines are not perfectly straight.

Did you know that in the beginning days of Judo they actually wore a silk sash for a belt? Interesting huh...ok well maybe not but keep in mind by the time TKD was developed in Korea they were using belts just like the Japanese since TKD came from Shotokan (regardless of what some Korean master wants to claim...it is not 2000 plus years old at all).

actually, the shotokan belt system and uniform came from Judo, if you look at old karate pictures you will see that they wore something completely different.

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