The Syllabus

The progression from white belt to black belt can seem daunting at first. Your instructors want you to succeed though! If in or after class, you feel like you can’t remember what you were supposed to do, then click on one of the following links to go to the page with your part of the syllabus.

As your knowledge increases, you’ll start to learn the Japanese terms for the moves, so we’ve made the syllabus sections in English and Japanese until you get to Dan grading when it’s only Japanese.

10th to 4th: English then Japanese
3rd to 1st: Japanese then English
Dan Grades: Japanese Only

Kyu Grade Syllabus

Dan Grade (Black Belt) Syllabus

1st Dan (Shodan)

2nd Dan (Nidan)

3rd Dan (Sandan)

4th Dan (Yondan)

What are the Karate Belts in order?

For Shotakan karate in our club the karate belts in order are:

  1. White

  2. Orange

  3. Red

  4. Yellow

  5. Green

  6. Purple

  7. Purple and One White Stripe

  8. Brown

  9. Brown and One White Stripe

  10. Brown and Two White Stripes

  11. Black

It should be noted that different styles of karate can have different belt colours and in a slightly different order. Although white is normally the lowest belt, brown the highest non-dan grade belt and black being the highest belt colour. Black belts traditinally, and within our club, do not have their dan grades marked on them although some styles do have dan rank bars sewn onto them.