Origin
The systematic use of belt colour to denote the rank was first used by Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo, who first devised the colored belt system using obi, and awarded the first black belts to denote a Dan rank in the 1880s. Initially the wide obi was used; as practitioners trained in kimono, only white and black obi were used. It was not until the early 1900s, after the introduction of the judogi, that an expanded colored belt system of awarding rank was created. Other martial arts later adopted the custom or variation on it (e.g. using colored sashes) to denote rank including in arts that traditionally did not have a formalized rank structure. This kind of ranking is less common in arts that do not claim a far eastern origin, though it is used in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program.
Read more about this topic: Black Belt (martial Arts)
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