Practising the martial arts is not only a matter of technique.
Etiquette — reishiki (礼式) — is not empty ceremony: it is the visible part of a state of mind.
Anyone entering a dojo for the first time notices immediately that people move differently. Not out of solemnity, but because every gesture has a reason, and most of those reasons are practical before they are symbolic.
Before You Enter
The bow at the door. You bow on entering the training hall and on leaving it, facing into the dojo. It is the first and the last gesture, and it marks the threshold: beyond it, you leave outside whatever you brought with you.
Footwear. Left at the entrance, arranged with the toes pointing outward. The detail is not fussiness — in Japanese tradition, shoes arranged this way show that you are thinking of the person coming after you.
Nails and jewellery. Fingernails and toenails cut short. Rings, watches, chains, earrings — removed, without exception. This is not a rule of etiquette but of safety: a long nail in a partner’s eye, or a ring caught in a keikogi, causes real injuries.
If you are late. Do not walk straight into the line. Bow at the entrance, kneel in seiza at the edge of the hall, and wait until the instructor signals you to join. It is not a punishment — it is how you avoid interrupting something already under way.
Positions and Key Moments
Seiza (正座) — the formal kneeling position. Used at the beginning and end of training, and for the moment of meditation. Practitioners take seiza in order of grade, the most senior settling first, to the right of the line as seen from shomen.
Posture: back straight, shoulders down, hands on the thighs, weight settled onto the heels.
If the knees will not allow it: this happens frequently past forty, or after any knee injury. The accepted alternative is anza — sitting cross-legged. If even that is not possible, sit on a chair at the end of the line. Nobody will judge you. What is required is not the position but the attitude: spine upright, attention present.
Mokuso (黙想) — the moment of meditation. Literally moku (silence) + sō (thought). At the start of training it settles the mind and prepares it; at the end, it brings it back to calm.
In practice: breathe through the nose, deeply, letting the abdomen expand, with the exhalation longer than the inhalation. In most dojo the eyes are closed — although in zazen, the tradition from which the practice derives, the eyes remain half-open with the gaze lowered, precisely to avoid drowsiness. Both work; follow what is practised in your own hall.
Mokuso yame (黙想止め) — the command that ends it. You open the eyes gradually and bring your attention back from within to the hall.
The Bows (Rei 礼)
The bow is the fundamental form of respect in the dojo. There are two kinds: ritsurei (立礼), the standing bow, and zarei (座礼), the bow from seiza, with the palms placed on the floor in front of the knees.
The order of commands, at the beginning and end of training, is almost identical in Shotokan clubs across the world:
1. Shomen ni Rei (正面に礼) — a bow towards shomen, the front of the hall, the place of honour. What stands there differs from dojo to dojo: a piece of calligraphy, the portrait of a predecessor, a symbolic shrine, or often nothing in particular. The bow is not towards an object but towards the line of transmission — towards those who practised before you and carried the art this far.
2. Sensei ni Rei (先生に礼) — a bow towards the chief instructor. At the start one says Onegaishimasu (“please teach me”); at the end, Arigatō gozaimashita (“thank you”).
Sensei (先生) means literally “one born before” — not “teacher,” but one who walked the road earlier.
3. Otagai ni Rei (お互いに礼) — the mutual bow between practitioners. Otagai means “one to another.” It marks the fact that you do not train alone: without a partner, there is nothing to practise.
One rule worth keeping: do not rise from seiza before the instructor. The order of rising repeats the order of sitting.
The Sempai–Kohai Relationship
Sempai (先輩) is the more experienced practitioner; kohai (後輩), the newer one. The relationship between them is the axis of dojo culture, and it is not hierarchy for hierarchy’s sake.
The sempai is answerable for the kohai’s progress — correcting, helping, answering the questions a kohai would not dare put to the instructor. The kohai returns respect through seriousness, not through deference.
What is learned here goes beyond the hall: the person two years ahead of you has something to give, and you have something to give the person coming after. Groups that work this way need no external motivation.
Small Rules That Are Noticed Immediately
- Do not walk in front of someone executing a technique. Go behind.
- Do not lean against the wall or stand with folded arms during explanations.
- Do not adjust your belt in front of others — turn your back to shomen.
- A clean keikogi, every session. This is not vanity; it is respect for whoever trains with you.
- When the instructor corrects someone else, listen. That correction is yours too.
On Oss
The word Oss is heard in most dojo outside Japan as acknowledgement, confirmation and greeting. We use it too, and there is nothing wrong with that.
It is worth knowing, though, that its meaning is less certain than is generally supposed. The etymology repeated in the dojo — oshi shinobu (押忍), “to push forward and endure” — is an interpretation constructed after the fact; the characters are ateji, assigned for sound rather than meaning. And in Japan the word is heard as distinctly masculine and informal, tied to the sporting world, and is not used in many traditional dojo.
None of this invalidates it. A word also means what the generations who spoke it invested in it. But if you ever come to train in Japan, listen first to how others speak before you use it.
What Remains
Etiquette is not learned from articles but from repetition. It rests, however, on a single principle from which everything else follows:
You do not perform the gestures because they are required. You perform them because the attention you invest in them is exactly the attention that will be missing from your technique, if you never practise it.
Whoever bows carelessly at the door will strike carelessly at the bag. Etiquette is not the setting for training. It is the first part of it.