On symbols, assumptions, and letting the work speak.
Rank is supposed to clarify things. Experience. Authority. Where someone stands. But it often does the opposite. It invites assumptions, stories, and judgments that say more about the observer than the person being observed. This is a reflection on why I stopped wearing mine, and what that choice revealed.
“Why don’t you wear your rank?”
The question came after a full day of training, once we’d stepped off the mat. Sweat was still drying. People were packing up. The room had that quiet, end-of-day feeling where conversations tend to slow down.
I hesitated. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I wasn’t sure which answer they were looking for.
Before I had a chance to answer, the question shifted again.
“Do you think you’re better than the rank you were given?”
That stopped me.
I don’t remember exactly what I said after that. What I remember is the sudden narrowing of the moment, that feeling of something ordinary that had been interpreted as something else entirely.
Dishonesty, maybe.
Disrespect.
Arrogance.
A few seconds later, as I took a drink of water, it was clarified for me.
“You should show respect to your teachers and wear it.”
I nodded. Not in agreement exactly, but more of an acknowledgment.
Because I’d never thought of it as disrespect.
And I'd certainly never thought of it as believing I was above the rank. If anything, I'd spent most of my life working around the opposite feeling. In dojos, in jobs, in introductions that made me sound more accomplished than I felt.
In martial arts, at least, I could just... not wear it.
I’ve been asked different versions of that question before. Sometimes directly. Sometimes sideways. Sometimes politely. And sometimes not so much.
Over the years, I’ve learned that not wearing rank tends to invite interpretation. People assume there must be a reason, usually one way more complicated than the truth.
I’ve never been particularly comfortable wearing visible markers of authority. Not just in martial arts, but anywhere. Rank, titles, credentials of any kind, once they’re on display, they tend to obscure the person.
And I’ve always preferred letting the work, or in this case skill (or lack thereof), do the talking.
Part of the confusion around rank, I think, comes from assuming it means the same thing everywhere.
It doesn’t.
In some systems, rank is earned through time. Years on the mat, steady attendance, gradual progression through the curriculum. In others, it can come suddenly, awarded for performance under pressure. This is called batsugun in Japanese (when I trained judo, I got rank based on tournament results).
Sometimes, especially for higher rank, it’s recognition for teaching, organizing, or representing an art well beyond the mat. Being an ambassador of your art.
In some Japanese and Chinese arts, you can train for years without ever being told where you stand. In others, the belt is a practical necessity, a way to organize large groups, or to give beginners something solid to hold onto while they find their footing.
None of these approaches are wrong.
They’re contextual.
I was reminded of that once during a public demonstration.
I was standing with one of my teachers, a Japanese instructor, someone whose eye for detail I trusted implicitly. The kind of teacher who didn’t speak casually, and never without reason. An instructor who was meticulous about details most people missed, who believed respect showed up in small, unglamorous ways.
One of the practitioners on the mat was wearing an old belt. Frayed and faded. Barely held together. The kind that people usually read as years on the mat.
As we watched, my teacher leaned slightly toward me and said, almost offhandedly,
“Why is he wearing such an old tattered belt?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. The question wasn’t critical, just observational.
In my head I was thinking that a frayed belt showed lots of training and discipline. But my teacher took it in a completely different direction.
“Maybe we should buy him a new one. Probably can’t afford it.”
His answer caught me totally off-guard.
Not because of what he said, but because of how quickly a story had formed in my mind around a piece of cloth.
Then he added, “If you train seriously, you take care of your equipment."
It wasn’t said harshly. It wasn’t said to embarrass anyone. It was matter-of-fact.
The point wasn’t rank.
It wasn’t experience.
It certainly wasn’t toughness.
It was attention.
I’ve known people who deliberately fray new belts, trying to imply years of training that haven’t actually been lived yet. At that point, it stops being a sign of work and becomes something else entirely, a kind of statement of implied skill or maybe a fashion statement.
The irony is that real time on the mat rarely needs to advertise itself.
I’ve seen the same thing happen in other rooms.
Years ago, when I was dojo-hopping between various Aikido dojo, I’d show up wearing a hakama, the traditional pleated trousers worn over the uniform. No belt visible. No rank displayed.
Years prior, I'd been training in Japanese jujutsu, where the hakama wasn’t a marker of rank so much as part of the uniform. I didn’t yet understand how differently it was read elsewhere... in this case the Aikido dojo.
People assumed I was senior. Not because of anything I said, simply because of how I was dressed. Occasionally someone would comment that my Aikido felt “different.” They couldn’t quite place it.
I never corrected the assumption. I just trained.
If I’m honest, the answer to the original question is probably simpler than it sounds.
I don’t care very much about rank.
Not because it’s meaningless, but because, over time, I’ve found it tells me less than other things do. What people do on and off the mat. How someone moves. How they treat people. How people act when things aren’t going their way.
I’ve trained in systems where rank was never displayed at all. No belts. No titles. And yet, it never took long to know who the seniors were. It was never guesswork.
Maybe that’s why I’ve grown indifferent about rank in my own practice. Seeing it inflate in some places. Rank increasing faster than skill. More titles, higher belts, but not necessarily deeper practice or greater responsibility.
Watching that happen made me less interested in displaying rank, and more concerned with staying honest in my own practice.
I don't know how that choice is read by others.
Maybe it's a form of silent protest. Or maybe it's just easier to critique the system than to examine why I've never been comfortable standing in it.
Either way, I'd rather let what I do speak for itself.