Black Belt WIP

In Kagemaru's ninja school the body is seen as a weak and soft thing which requires constant polishing until it reaches its ultimate hardness. In the school there are many specialities of martial artists but all of them focus on the very same concept of conquering the body's softness:

* sumo wrestlers turn themselves into huge unbreakable walls and the earth trembles when they step on it;
* warriors polish their muscles until their whole body is hard as rock and you'd break your finger trying to poke their muscles;
* spies are quite the opposite of warriors and wrestlers: they are tiny and you could poke them all you want, you could twist, stretch, fold, push, pull or do anything to their bodies and they'd take absolutely no damage from it.

Each way is very difficult and the masters carefully consider for every new pupil which of these directions the boy should take. The philosophy behind all of these ways is the same, conquering the body's softness. But the ways of training are fundamentally different.

However, the black belt is equally possible to obtain at the end of all of these three roads. By making himself the ideal wrestler, warrior or spy, the young man takes the annual tests until he's considered worthy of wearing the black belt, the sign of the highest rank for a student.

The cloth belt, judging by the folds, is wrapped around the spine in many dense layers. Probably tied in some special way, making the knot a kind of ritual and no longer, it is not untied.

Rounded chest above the belt and straight silhouette, very aesthetically pleasing.

Luca

Thank you so much! Probably a meditation before breakfast. The ninjutsu tradition says that one has to completely empty his bowels before being allowed the next meal, which allows to remove toxins and accumulate more energy. The process starts with using a system of water buckets to tug on an oiled rope, shrinking the waist to the backbone. Then several layers of cloth are wrapped tight around the cinched waist, the rope is released, allowing the waist to expand but not more than an inch. A large hourglass is turned to count around 40 minutes.

The whole ritual is often praised for its aesthetics almost like a tea ceremony, even though it was originally designed only as a cleansing procedure.