Why years of training, rank and tradition do not automatically make someone a better person

Character traits can certainly be built, shaped and even transformed with enough effort and willingness. Karate, or any martial art, can provide opportunities for that growth, but I do not believe the process is automatic.

We often hear that martial arts build discipline, respect, humility and character. Perhaps they can. But simply spending years in a dojo does not necessarily make someone a better person.

The important distinction, I think, is that karate can provide the conditions for personal development. What someone does with those conditions is another matter entirely.

Okinawan karate master Kiichi Nakamoto once discussed this in an interview. He explained that before the war, karate masters could be extremely selective about whom they taught. Students might be treated harshly or expelled for relatively minor reasons, and a student was expected to possess good character before being accepted for instruction.

That is interesting because it turns around one of the assumptions we often make today.

Rather than karate being regarded as something that automatically created good character, Nakamoto Sensei’s recollection suggests that good character could actually be considered a prerequisite for learning karate in the first place.

I do believe martial arts can be a powerful vehicle for personal growth. Training can demand patience, perseverance, self-control and the willingness to keep working at something when progress is slow. A good teacher and a healthy dojo environment can also encourage honesty, responsibility and respect for other people.

But none of those things are guaranteed.

Martial arts can just as easily reinforce less desirable qualities. Rank can feed ego. Authority can become self-importance. Loyalty to a particular teacher, style or lineage can become superiority over others. Competition can encourage people to measure their worth against everyone around them.

And sometimes the reality is much more serious than arrogance or ego.

Over the years, I have encountered people with very poor character who nevertheless trained for decades, held senior grades, taught others and were treated with considerable respect within the martial arts. Some behaved in ways that were dishonest, abusive or criminal. Some eventually faced prosecution and imprisonment.

Years of training had not somehow corrected their character.

That alone should make us cautious about claiming that karate inherently builds character.

I have certainly seen people become better because of their training.

I have also seen people become more arrogant, more insecure, more concerned with status and more convinced of their own importance.

The martial arts did not necessarily create those qualities, but neither did training automatically remove them.

That is why, when someone asks whether martial arts can change a person’s character for the better, my answer would still be: it depends.

It depends on the person, on the teacher, on the environment in which they train.

And perhaps most importantly, it depends on whether the individual is actually willing to examine themselves honestly.

The phrase “perfection of character” is often used within karate. It is an appealing ideal, although I have always wondered whether perfection of anything human is really possible.

Perhaps striving is more important than arriving.

For me, any character development that comes from practicing karate is largely the result of what we put into it. Training may challenge us. It may expose weaknesses. It may provide opportunities to become more patient, disciplined or thoughtful.

But it cannot make those choices for us.

Character requires time, effort, self-reflection and the willingness to learn both inside and outside the dojo.

Karate may give us the opportunity to become better people.

Whether we actually do so is still up to us.