the Tenth Dan

Photo credit: Lance Iversen / The Chronicle

I wanted to share an uplifting story via The San Francisco Chronicle.  Sensei Keiko Fukuda was recently the first woman ever promoted to tenth dan after a very long wait (she is only the sixteenth person to have achieved this rank).  At 98 years old she is the last living student of Judo founder Kanō Jigorō and has been practicing since 1935.  Previously she had waited for two decades before a prohibition barring her from being elevated to sixth dan was reversed in 1972.  Sensei Fukada teaches judo three days per week at a dojo in California.