The Dôjô (Training Place)

Yawara Jûdô Association Student Manual Update

I have been working on updating the Yawara Jûdô Association Student Manual for about a year now, off and on. I have been working on a few things here and there but decided that I’d start doing major editing at the Dôjô section.

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, though I don’t know by whom. In jûdô, the Dôjô, or training place, has very specific locations. While I could say wheat those locations are and describe the locations, it is far easier to develop a graphic and show the student who is curious or needs to know it for advancement.

You may notice that the locations are in Japanese and are somewhat similar, i.e. two words end in –za and two other words end in –seki. The predicate –za is indicative of a seat and is used in other places, such as seiza (sitting on knees) or anza (sitting cross-legged). The predicate –seki indicates a place, well that’s the best definition I’m finding.

So, let’s talk about the various locations in the dôjô. The most obvious area in a well-furnished dôjô should be the “kamiza” (上座、かみざ). This seat is the side of the dôjô where the picture of O-sensei Jigoro Kano is hung on the wall. Kamiza means superior seat and is where the head instructor and any guest would sit or stand during the class and at the opening and closing of the class.

Opposite the kamiza is the “shimoza” (下座、しもざ), which means inferior seat. This is the side where the students, typically the “mudansha” or non-black belts sit. The students are arranged from most senior grade to least senior grade, with the highest on the instructor’s left side when the instructor has his back to the kamiza. In some dôjô there are a lot of students and so the line up on the shimoza can have more than one row. In that case the pattern remains the same with the highest grade on the instructor’s left expanding to the instructor’s right until there is no more room, then the students line up behind the first line and repeat from highest to lowest.

To the left of the kamiza is the “jôseki” (上席、じょうせき), the superior place. This side is where the yudansha, black belt holders, sit during the line up time. These black belts, and occasionally the high kyu if there are no other black belts, sit ranked from highest to lowest with the highest being the closest to the kamiza.

The final side of the dôjô is the “shimoseki” (下関、しもぜき), the inferior place, which I had never known before and discovered thanks to “JoseVerson” on the JudoForum. This is the place where, should there be too many mudansha sitting in the shimoza, they would then expand around the shimozeki, where, presumably the lowest grade would be closest to the kamiza.