Talk:Kyū

Translation question
I wrote most of this to date, but I still have no idea whether 'kyu' has a concrete translation. Does it mean 'junior' or 'junior grade' and can it be used to refer to the people with these grades? "Kyu-level practitioners" seems to be correct, but feels a bit clumsy. Or am I being over-protective?

Rednaxela 22:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * To the best of my knowledge, kyu just means class, level or grade. In terms of of useage I think you would use the word with the number, like 'yonkyu' to refer to the person with that rank, but I may be wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.189.93.118 (talk • contribs)


 * For Wikipedia, it's best to find an authoritative source that provides your definition.
 * Kortoso (talk) 14:30, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Random Fact?
Someone keeps inserting a note that the word "kyu" is used to describe a crazy kid. An admittedly brief dictionary search found eleven homophones for "kyū" (きゅう), and four homophones for "kyu" (きゅ), none of which meant anything remotely related to "crazy kid". Assuming this is a slang usage, can whoever keeps adding this please provide some kind of citation, or at least assure us that it's actually the same kanji as the one meaning 'grade' (and not one of the other fourteen I found), thereby actually belonging in this article?Bradford44 15:30, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Western innovation?
The article says that color belts are not commonly used in Japan. Where did they originate? -Toptomcat 19:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Off the top of my head - France. Check for citations if you think it's an important piece of information. As I understand it, completely unsupported by references (although they should be easy to find) the coloured belt system appeared when Judo was first brought to Europe and demonstrated in Paris. Why it appeared is a different question, to which I won't pretend to know an answer... Leushenko (talk) 03:29, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm just another random person on the internet, but it's a commonplace among martial artists to assume (without proof) that the belt system was invented to appease impatient westerners. On the other hand, this website about judo may furnish answers: https://judoinfo.com/obi/
 * Kortoso (talk) 14:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Amount of kyu ranks
It was mentioned that aikido has 6 kyu ranks. Also Kodokan Judo and many Karate styles has only 6 kyu ranks for adults. (Aikido can hava 8 kyu ranks if junior ranks are counted, thought they are not used everywhere.) Korppi76 12:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think that there is any standard in aikido. In the United States Aikido Federation, there are five kyu ranks that you can test for.  Some people refer to students that haven't receive rank yet as 6th kyu, but as far as I know there is nothing official about that name.  Some schools have 10-6th kyu for children. Edwin Stearns | Talk 19:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Belt colors?
I can't find anywhere info about the colors of the belts in the kyū system. Someone please help and put info about it in this article. 80.35.16.144 —Preceding comment was added at 15:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The belt colours aren't standardised. The colour isn't the relevant part; it just serves as a visual aid. Leushenko (talk) 14:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I think one of the things that are missing from the article, is that the colours of the belts - progressing from lighter (white/yellow) to darker (red/brown) - elegantly evolved so you could use one belt and dye it multiple times to indicate your kyu without buying a new one every time. This is not such an issue for western practitioners but I believe that obi (belts) were quite expensive and difficult to come by in Japan after WW2 (source below). This is alluded to in the Dan_(rank) article but not in this one. Also from the simple Karate belts article: "Some believe when a student graduated a kyu, he/she would dye their current belt the new, desired color.[3] This was often done in Japan during WWII when it was a very poor country.[4]" Key source: Page 29 (Chapter 2) by Pawlett, R., 2008. The Karate Handbook (Martial Arts (Rosen)), Rosen Publishing Group. 77.103.169.140 (talk) 20:41, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Lowest rank!?
The table of kyuu ranks lists 10 kyuu as the lowest rank. The amount of kyuu ranks, depends on the dojo. Not the martial art, as some dojos can have, say, 6, while another has 10 and another has 12... Go can have 20-50 kyuu ranks, depending on the country/server/whatever. To list one kyuu rank as the lowest, is ludicrous. I'll remove that.--ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 03:45, 14 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Please provide references for this. Some (in fact, most from I can tell) styles have a fixed number of kyu ranks; only a few arts allow dojos to determine this by themselves.
 * Kortoso (talk) 14:39, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

What they aren't called
"This is not called "Shikyū"." etc.

You could go on forever listing what the grades aren't called. What is this for, exactly? If they're often wrongly called Shikyū, Rokukyū and Shichikyū, we ought to be specific about this. And "This is not pronounced as "Jūkyū"." is absurd partly as many of us don't know how "Jūkyū" is pronounced, and partly as it goes out of its way not to explain how "Jukkyū" is meant to be pronounced. — Smjg (talk) 22:19, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Those grades may, quite easily, wrongly be though to be shikyuu, rokukyuu etc, by those with some understanding of Japanese. 3rd kyuu is sankyuu. Three is san in Japanese, add kyuu, and you have sankyuu. Four, on the other hand, is either shi or yon, just as seven is either shichi or nana. Six is Roku, but 6th kyuu is rokkyuu, just as ten is juu, but 10th kyuu is jukkyuu. Anyone who has learned a bit of Japanese, could easily make those mistakes. Anyone with a bit greater level of Japanese, will understand that it's not that simple, but lower levels are more common, and the numbers are amongst the first things you learn. I even know someone who learned the numbers in Japanese, despite not learning Japanese, due to her training judo a while.--ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 05:23, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that, strictly speaking, jukkyū is an incorrect reading of 10th kyū (十級) and it would most likely be marked as such if given as an answer on a school test. じゅっ  sounds more natural because of its similarity to じゅう  so that probably explains why so many people think it is a standard on reading  for 十, even though it is not. There are other examples of this such as 十分 (jippun), 十歳 (jissai), 十回 (jikkai), 十個 (jikko), 十匹 (jippiki), etc. In all of those examples, 十 is often pronounced as じゅっ  in the Kanto (Tokyo) region. Since how people speak in and around Tokyo is pretty much taken as standard Japanese (標準語),  じゅっ  has slowly but surely spread throughout rest of the country. So even though 十級 (jikkyū) is technically correct, over time it has been slowly replaced in everyday speech by the more natural sounding jukkū . On NHK broadcasts, however, the announcers still say jippun, jissai , jikkai , jikko , jippiki , and jikkyū , etc.  Also, since there are still lots of Japanese who consider じゅっ  to be nothing more a conversational local dialect and not proper  Japanese, using it in job interviews and other formal situations might make others wonder about your educational background. It would be kind of similar to using ain't  in English. - Marchjuly (talk) 12:37, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * That's quite interesting ...and checking those (for those that had entries) with a English-Japanese dictionary does seem to confirm the "ji" form. Both "ju" and "ji" are noted as possible pronunciations.
 * It's always nice to learn more. Thanks for the information :) --ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 04:15, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Japan Kanji Apptitude Testing Public Interest Foundation
The Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test Association is not correct or no longer correct. According to this (in English) and this (in Japanese) website, the 日本漢字能力検定協会 refers to itself as The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Public Interest Foundation. The official English name of the test is the Japan Kanji Aptitude Test but it's often referred to as Kanji Kentai  or simply Kanken  for short and there is exists a Wikipedia article for it. See Kanji Kentei Moreover, in my opinion, the reasons for both the 準1級 and the more recently added 準2級 levels have more to do with the amount of material that used to be covered by the 1級 and 2級 exams, and generating more revenue (many people tend to take the exams in order and purchase the Foundation's study guides, etc.) than making the exams easier to pass. I guess you could assume that less material to study means an easier test to pass, but I don't think this would be a very accurate assumption. I am, however, only basing this upon my own experiences and the experiences of others I know. I passed 2級 before 準2級 was added and it was a hard test; however, it was certainly not too hard to pass. Moreover, although I have also not taken either 準2級 or the new 2級, I do know quite a few people (including a few Japanese) who have and failed, so the tests still seem to be fairly hard. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * While you make a decent case for what the official name is, that doesn't mean that, that is what should be written in the article. Please note WP:OFFICIALNAMES and WP:COMMONNAME. Wikipedia encourages use of a commonly recognizable name. Not the most correct one. The official name of the organization should be noted
 * ...in Kanji Kentei.
 * There is no need to even mention the (quite long) full official name, here.--ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 04:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * @ZarlanTheGreen:  . Thanks for the feedback. I only changed the name because the original text was different from what it says on the organization's website. Is Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test Association  how the organization is commonly referred to outside of Japan? It seems to me like somebody translated 協会 as Association  and then just added it to Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test. There's nothing wrong with that of course per se, and if you google that you will get some hits, but you will also get hits for Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, Japanese Kanji Ability Test Association, Kanji Aptitude Testing Association as well as for Japan Kanji Education Promotion Association. I wasn't sure which of the aforementioned was more commonly used, so I just went with what was on the organization's website. FWIW, Business Japanese Proficiency Test gives a link to this JETRO page which used Japan Kanji Aptitude Test Foundation . That might be an acceptable compromise, but that JETRO page links to this, which brings us back to Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Public Interest Foundation  according to this English contact page. Since the official name is too long (and probably more appropriate for the Kanji Kentei''  page) and since there are different English translations of the organization's name being used by different websites, maybe the best thing to do is to simply remove any mention of it (i.e., the organization) altogether. For example, maybe it could just read as follows:"For instance, the Japanese Kanji Apitude Test, which measures a person's ability to correctly read, write and use kanji, has levels for 10th to 1st Kyū, including Pre-1st and Pre 2nd Kyū." Just a suggestion - Marchjuly (talk) 05:36, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * That does, indeed, seem a very sensible solution. Especially as there is not need to mention the organization, in the first place.--ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 06:08, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * OK . Would you like to make the edit or do you think it should wait to see if others also agree? Thanks again for all the input - Marchjuly (talk) 08:26, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * PS: I will post something on the talk pages of Kanji Kentei, etc., to let the people watching those pages know about this seemingly official name and see how they want to handle it. - Marchjuly (talk) 08:26, 29 January 2014 (UTC)