It seemed to me that in the old days, your "seniors" were those who were older then you, or who trained longer then you, which is fitting for the culture. So, whether someone was your "junior" or "senior" did not depend on skill or any kind of deligation. Then, the rest was based on skill. Within the school, you just knew the pecking order based on who was better. So, you could be revered as one of the schools best fighters, even if you are junior to many people in the club.
Then, it would seem, that "successorship" wasn't a concern in the old days. The "Pecking Order" would ultimatily decide which people would succeed the art. Because of this, there were generally more then one who succeeded. If someone only had 2 lessons and they were to try to claim successorship or superiority, the other better fighters and seniors would simply call them out on it. So this skill based pecking order system is what kept the quality of these arts high; rank, or some sort of "successor" crown was not nessicary.
Then, the popularization of foriegn arts came to play in the PI, changing the environment of FMA. You gained credability by getting a black belt in TKD or a Japanese style, even if you actually learned how to fight from an old master with no rank. The realization hit many FMA masters (Remy Presas was the pioneer in understanding this) that FMA would get not bigger then a small, backyard type club if the pecking order and skill progression was determined by how well you could play or fight with others. The reason is that the general populus can't train the way they did in the old days; constantly fighting to establish your position. Plus, a realization hit that you can make some $$ off this stuff. So, rank was introduced, and uniforms were more widely used so people could identify their school.
There is good and bad to this. The good is that a belt ranking is a very effecient way of spreading the art, and keeping students. The bad news is that it is, by itself, rank is incompatable with FMA, and the skill based circular structure of the art. Japanese and Korean Martial arts have a linear structure to them, so a belt system makes sense for them. It doesn't make sense when the structure of you art is circular (in other words, not "must learn this before that"). So, the unfortunate end result is, you have a lot of belt ranks and titles out there in FMA that don't mean squat, because the teacher didn't have a linear, quantifiable method of ranking people. My late teacher Remy Presas' way of handing out belts and titles is a prime example of this problem.
Then there is the issue of "successorship." When you have a circular structure, you could have one guy who is a great fighter, another a better teacher but not a better fighter, another who is better at the systems blade work, another who is better then the blade guy at the stick, and so on. It wasn't a linear thing where you just said, "Hey...your the highest rank and furthest along, so you'll succeed the art." So, what would make sense would be that the seniors and highest skilled go off and have to make their own way, rather then riding on the coat tails of their masters deligations of "title" or "rank." But, when you have applied "rank" to a circular method, then you have all sorts of questions and problems about successorship. Do you crown your highest rank if a lower rank is more skilled? Do you crown your best knife fighter, or stick fighter? What if you crown someone, and they stop actively training, but another less ranked person continues and becomes the best in the system, yet, he has no "successorship" to back it up? The list of problems goes on. Most of the FMA that have tried to make the successorship thing work have failed horribly.
"Rank," "titles," and "successorship" issues may be here to stay, but that doesn't mean that they are inherently compatable with FMA. I feel that by themselves, they are not. If you are doing a rank based FMA program, you really have to get creative to make the two work together.
:asian:
