Fully Custom Shito-Ryu Dan Certificate

 We have been working with Genbu-kai UK to produce a traditional format Shito-Ryu Dan certificate. 

Fully Custom Shito-Ryu A3 Dan Certificate

Apologies for a long post, this was a lot of work and we thought you would be interested in the process.

Our experience is very much  based in the Shotokan Ryu and we don't have the knowledge to provide script translations, but we were interested to see if we could be of  service for this enquiry.

Our customer wanted to keep very much to the style of their existing International Federation Certificate both in border and text. However, they did need to make adjustments to the issuing authority so it represented the devolved National Association rather than the International Federation.

Our first step - Establishment of authority to issue Dan Certificates. 

We do not "Police" the issuing of authority, but we do make enquiries and undertake some research to authenticate a request for Dan Certificates. On a small number of occasions customers have "withdrawn" from an enquiry when we have politely asked what we consider "reasonable" questions. 

As an existing format Dan Certificate we had been provided with a photo of  our clients Rokudan issued by Shihan Fumio Demura. The author of quite a few books that had sat on my bookshelf for 20 years! Our customer is recognised as the International Federation's representative in the UK.

We started by establishing the kanji used on the certificate so we could insert them into our graphics package.

右の者, Migi no mono means right person, the persons name who is written in the column on the right of this line of vertical text.

糸東流空手道,  Shito-ry karate-do

参段,  Sandan, 3rd dan

允に授與する, Awarded to

玄武会連合王国, Genbu kai rengo-okkoku, Genbu kai UK

We added the column for the imperial calendar date, changing the era to the new imperial era and added the Chief Instructors details.

The customer wanted to retain the border, but we could not source it anywhere. Our work around saw the client sending us an existing blank dan grade certificate, which we then had commercially scanned. We then had remove all the background and text to just leave us with a border. It turned out to be about four hours work in itself.

The kamon did not scan well and we could not find one on the internet that was of a high enough resolution, so we created one from scratch in the graphics package.

Last but not least was to recreate the hanko. Although we have searched for over ten years for a seal font we have never managed to access one. However, for this projects we made further enquiries in Japan and managed to access font from a Tokyo based font factory. The new Association kanji were transposed into the seal font and the inkan positioned on the certificate.

How long did it take? Well we lost track of hours, perhaps just as well because it would not be commercially viable to do. An estimate, about 16 hours over a 6 week period. 

Did we enjoying doing it, absolutely. 

The first batch of certificates are awarded.

Current costings can be found in the relevant shop page please click on the button below to view.

"Click" to go to - Certificates section shop page

Top Tip

If you are accessing this site on your phone you may wish to view the "Web version" and access the menu in the side-bar to navigate. Just scroll down for the link.