My Dad Got a Black Belt in 3 Months

My dad spent 3 months in Japan in 1964 and got his judo black belt from the Kodokan – the mother ship of Judo schoools – going from white to black belt in 3 months.

I’m not sure if this is the fastest anyone has ever done this, but I figure it makes a nice story that folks might be interested in, and it dawned on me that time is running out to see if there is anyone still alive who might have personal knowledge to fill in the gaps that I don’t know. So I shared a version of this story on reddit to get some more details in 2023: https://www.reddit.com/r/judo/s/ebahMpXu0r . My dad died in 2011 and I regret not asking him for more details when I had the chance.

In 1964 he went to Japan as part of a junior year abroad. He was a successful college wrestler at Ohio Wesleyan university. The exchange was a program through Earlham College, where he met my mom, who also signed up for the same program. According to her, he told her he never intended to stay the whole junior year because he wanted to get back for wrestling season. So at least one version of the story is that he went to Japan intending to get a black belt in 3 months. He was 19 years old when he was there.

Growing up he told me a bit about his time at the Kodokan. Apparently while he was there, Donn Draeger (Donn F. Draeger) was also training there, and so my dad spent a lot of time training with him. As a kid he told me that his philosophy was to always be the last one to leave the mats. It seems like he must have crammed an enormous amount of mat time into 3 months. This is as much as I remember from first hand conversations with him before he died. (Side note: I wrestled in high school and I’ve been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu for most of my adult life, and I too have a hard time leaving the mat as long as there is a warm body still around).

One version of the story I heard at his funeral. He was getting back into Judo in his 50’s/early 60’s, so he made some Judo friends where he was living in Fort Wayne, Indiana. One of them, Joe Higi, came to his funeral. Joe told me that there was a promotion ceremony of sorts where my dad was with some army rangers and a Kodokan black belt tested each of them in turn, defeating all of them. When it was my dad’s turn, he executed some sort of standing choke and defeated the black belt. Then he did it again. So they gave him a black belt. I suspect this is an apocryphal story, because my dad wasn’t in the army until later, so I think this might have been a juxtaposition of judo stories. And Joe passed 5 years later so I can’t ask him for more details, either. When I ask my mom, she doesn’t remember any details about a promotion ceremony. On the other hand, I’ve never attended a Kodokan belt promotion ceremony, so… maybe this is how they do it or did it.

However, after sharing with Reddit, apparently there is a process called a Batsugun promotion or Batsugun-shodan where if you defeat 3 black belts of a higher rank in a row by Ippon (major decision) in judo, it’s an instant promotion to the next rank of black belt. My mom confirms that he did beat 3 black belts in a row. So it seems like this part of the story was true. I’m not sure about the army ranger part, though.

My mom does say that when he got back to the U.S. he downplayed his black belt, feeling like he hadn’t deserved it, and when he did judo in med school he wore a brown belt. On the other hand, I do know that he competed in the Atlanta Open in 2010 as a black belt and took second, after basically spending most of his life away from Judo.

He did spend a lot of time studying lots of martial arts when I was growing up. Just not Judo. Tae Kwon Do with me when I was in elementary/middle school. Then he and I would wrestle a lot when I was in middle/high school. Although, sometimes he would apply Judo rules when we wrestled. I still remember the first time I was choked unconscious. I was 16 or 17 and I shot in a single leg on him in the living room. Apparently at that point we were playing by judo rules because I woke up a few seconds later from a guillotine. (Fun side note: last time I was choked unconscious was by Henry Akins, one of Rickson Gracie’s BJJ black belts, at one of his seminars). My dad also started getting into Aikido. And I know he spent some time with John Saylor (https://johnsaylorsja.com/JohnSaylorSite/Pages/Main_Pages/Biography.html ) doing John’s Shingitai Jiujitsu when he lived in Mansfield, Ohio.

I also have a certificate proclaiming him a black belt from the Kodokan in 1964. It’s in Japanese, but my mom speaks Japanese. I believe it’s real. I also have his college yearbook talking about how he went to Japan and earned his Judo black belt in their little blurb about him as captain of the wrestling team. Finally, I have his black belt certificate from John Saylor in Shingitai Jujitsu (I believe John was calling it Shingitai Goshin-Jitsu at the time, but his web site doesn’t call it that now).

So… bottom line is my dad got his black belt in 3 months from the most prestigious judo school school in the world… And it took me almost 18 years to get my black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

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