In kendo, the higher grades require years of training after the grade before. Under the rules of the All Japan Kendo Federation, a candidate for seventh dan must have trained for at least six years after receiving sixth dan. A candidate for eighth dan must have trained for at least ten years after seventh dan and be at least 46 years old.
A Japanese university lecture page puts the pass rate of the eighth-dan examination at one percent or less.
A rakugo storyteller’s career passes through the ranks of zenza, futatsume and shin’uchi. One guide to rakugo says that the zenza stage usually lasts four or five years. Another says that the step from futatsume to shin’uchi takes about ten years.
The first guide puts the whole path from entering the profession to becoming shin’uchi at ten to fifteen years, depending on talent and effort.
As a rule, the Yokozuna Deliberation Council recommends a sumo wrestler for the top rank, yokozuna, only after he wins two tournaments in a row as ōzeki, or achieves a record of equal value.
Under the council’s internal rules, a recommendation based on a record of equal value, not two straight wins, needs the votes of two thirds of the members present.
Ichininmae (一人前): one person’s share. The Daijisen dictionary defines it as reaching a passable level in an art or a field of learning. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten adds: reaching the level of others in a skill, and being good enough to be accepted in that world.
The Heibonsha World Encyclopedia calls it a word of evaluation for a grown adult, or for someone whose skill has reached a set level.
Japan’s official wage survey for 2025 shows pay rising with age. For men, monthly wages peak at ages 55 to 59, at 445,600 yen. That is 181.4 percent of the wage at ages 20 to 24.
By length of service, wages for all workers are highest among those with 30 years or more at the same employer, at 444,200 yen.
Since April 1989, newly appointed teachers at national and public schools in Japan have gone through shoninsha kenshū, initial training. The law requires the training to last one year from the date of hiring.
For each new teacher, a shidō kyōin, a guiding teacher, is appointed from among the vice principal, the teachers and the lecturers of the same school.
On October 31, 2022, at the Kabukiza in Tokyo, the actor Ichikawa Ebizō took the name Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII Hakuen. The great kabuki name Danjūrō returned for the first time in nine years, since his father, the twelfth Danjūrō, died in 2013.
He had carried other names before. In 1985, he took the name Ichikawa Shinnosuke VII.
Meshitaki sannen, nigiri hachinen: three years cooking the rice, eight years shaping the nigiri. The saying describes the long apprenticeship of a sushi chef.
On October 29, 2015, the entrepreneur Horie Takafumi attacked it on Twitter: “Sushi restaurants that are any good today don’t do such leisurely training. Sense matters more.” The news site J-CAST reported on the dispute that followed.
A verse attributed to the tea master Sen no Rikyū reads: Kiku sahō mamori tsukushite yaburu tomo hanaruru tote mo moto o wasuru na. Keep the rules and forms completely. Even when breaking them, even when leaving them, do not forget the root.
The verse is linked to shuhari, the stages of learning a traditional art. Shu is holding to the basics. Ha is adapting them. Ri is developing one’s own way.