Shotokan kyu and dan gradings worldwide have for decades generally featured a silly practice that ought to be stopped, but chances are it never will be because virtually all senior instructors are mired in tired, tedious tradition.
The grading format follows a stale routine where candidates have learned kihon, kata, and kumite in a prescribed order—there are no surprises. Most organizations usually have a manual that sets out the written syllabus to enable students to familiarize themselves with the techniques they’re expected to perform. On examination day, a designated senior member of the pompous examiners’ panel gets the proceedings going by summoning the candidates for each level and then, reading directly from a script, announces the techniques to be performed.
This is where it gets silly. First, the kihon is usually written in Japanese terminology which the announcer pronounces incorrectly, stumbling over the foreign terms and making a mess of it. Meanwhile, the candidates are lined up, nervously listening to the garbled instructions. I have heard this even from self-anointed “masters” who haven’t taken the time or are too obtuse to learn how to pronounce the Japanese terms correctly. I’ve observed Japanese seniors wryly listen to this disrespectful incompetence.
Second (even sillier), the candidates have already spent months or years preparing for their examination according to their manual. Surely they are thoroughly familiar with their syllabus and the order of the kihon that they need no such spoon-fed prompting.
I avoid this daft procedure by providing a written version of each syllabus, with each combination numbered from one to however many there are. As they do with their kata, students must know each combination and its corresponding number like the back of their karate hand so they can perform their kihon at their examination in random order according to the number I call out. I also make things unpredictable by mixing up the kihon, kata, and kumite so the candidates can’t anticipate what’s coming next. This is a good way to compel them to prepare themselves so well that they unhesitatingly spring into action simply on hearing me call out whatever I feel like in an attempt to catch them napping—and to make their grading a properly stimulating experience. Granted, shodan examinations often involve a hundred candidates, notably in the bigger organizations, so the kihon–kata–kumite conveyor belt makes things more manageable. But for anything less than, say, thirty candidates at any level, the unexpected and unspecified are a much better test.