I would like to know the opinion of Bujinkan practitioners as to the value of their grades as compared with those in other arts.
To clarify:
In Karate, Judo, Aikido etc the grades tend to follow a strict minimum time frame. Something like:
1st Dan (four years minimum training)
2nd Dan (2 years after Shodan)
3rd Dan (3 years after Nidan)
4th Dan (4 years after Sandan)
(and so on)
And so you would expect, say a 4th Dan to have at least 13 years training behind them. And in the case of Karate at least you would expect to find a 9th Dan or 10th Dan only on somebody that is at least 60 - for example Kanazawa, Enoeda, Nakayama etc.
The reason for my question is this: on our courses students of the aforementioned Budo have a rough idea of the experience of other students on a seminar by the colour of the belt and the amount of stripes on the belt. For instance, I may not know anything about Judo but if I am on a seminar I know that a brown belt in the art probably has at least three years experience and a 10th Dan has probably been doing Judo about 50 years!
We have just opened up our association to other martial arts (other than our original Karate, Judo, Jujutsu, Aikido, Kobudo and Iaido) and needed to reach some sort of understanding of the kind of standard we can expect for equivalent grades. For instance we had a Thai Boxer join and we needed to work out the rough correlation between a Thai Bramajarn and a Japanese Hanshi, a Thai "7th Khan" and a Japanese 1st Dan (as an example).
If, hypothetically we ever had a Ninjutsu/Ninpo Taijutsu/Bujinkan/etc instructor join our association how would we compare the grade?
I think in the more "mainstream" Japanese arts to be a 12th Dan you would need to be about a hundred years of age and having been studying since birth - but in Ninjutsu this seems to be a grade achievable by the age of 40.
I am not criticisising Hatsumi Sensei's decision to introduce grades up to 15th Dan (it is his art he can do as he likes) and I am familiar with the argument that the grades 11th-15th Dan are really "phases" of 10th Dan etc.
I am also well aware that many of you will say "grades are irrelevant - shut up and train" - but without going down that road what sort of comparrison would you make?
For instance I think Richard Van Donk (I'm only picking on him because Google picked him out) has been training since 1967 and boasts the grade of 15th Dan. I think the highest grade a westerner training in Karate in this time frame could claim would be about 7th Dan? Two of my teachers started training in 1973 and they are both graded 6th Dan which I consider fairly modest - presumambly in this time frame it would be possible to get to about 14th Dan in Bujinkan.
So what is the equivalent (in say Karate/Judo/Aikido) of a 1st Dan, 5th Dan, 10th Dan and 15th Dan in Bujinkan in terms of time-served, understanding, experience etc.
Respectfully
Simon