by Nick Lowry
Senpai/Kohai describes a relationship of seniority and responsibility that is used in traditional dojos to help define the roles that we fulfill in training together. Senpai is basically “senior” who is entrusted to act as a mentor and guide to kohai, the “junior” whose job it is to let the senpai lead and teach — the system is basically a product of Confucianism and, at its best, can help to avoid conflicts that arise in training by placing everyone in a simple vertical structure– importantly we should see that it is a structure based not on knowledge, or merit , or technical finesse, but on simple seniority. If someone has been around longer than you — they are your senpai. Doesn’t matter if they know more stuff or less stuff or if they are more or less skillful — its just time. The structure is elegant but also weak because it is all about time.
Most of the time this works out pretty ok. High ranks teach lower ranks. Senior folks help junior folks and keep them safe. As long as there is a good size gap in ranking and seniority between the two individuals, everything mostly works as intended– but when we start trying to apply senpai /kohai to our own peer group, the weakness of the structure becomes obvious. Among a group of five black belts should time alone be the main issue?– probably not– because of this, often, even in traditional dojos, the whole senpai/kohai thing is basically maintained as the system for kyu grades relating to each other and to the dan grades above them and is mostly discarded for the peer group above shodan when a horizontal, more Taoist structure takes its place.
As Black belts, we are all basically peers– the seniority gradient still exists, obviously but now we are more interested in the better ideas, the greater skills and the more natural human relationships. If we try to blindly stay locked into the vertical seniority structure, we find that the system becomes too restrictive or even burdensome– like all artificial systems, the simplistic vertical senpai/kohai deal can just wind up getting in the way of too many fruitful human interactions.
So as higher grades we learn to live in two worlds and balance our actions and reactions within them respectively– In the vertical world we try not to interfere with other dan grade’s senpai /kohai relationships with kyu grades (unless safety is at issue) because this strengthens and supports the senpai’s ability to teach; and in the horizontal, we give our peers plenty of room to grow and express themselves, we appreciate each others strengths and foibles, and we take lessons from one another with civility and grace. We all grow and shine together.
We all start out in a neat-orderly-vertical Confucian world and eventually we graduate into a fertile-organic-human-horizontal Taoist world– in the process, we learn that is best to use the vertical where it is useful and forget about it where it just clutters things up.
