A university club in Japan is a different sort of karate club. Because all of the participants join the club during their freshman year of college, the club can follow a strict hierarchy. The freshmen are the beginners, and as the school year progresses, they gain experience and are awarded more ranks. The sophomores outrank the freshmen, and the juniors outrank the sophomores. Usually the juniors and seniors receive the rank of shodan within 2 or 3 years of training, so at the end of the junior year, a member of a Japanese university karate club should hold a first degree black belt.
Some seniors receive the second degree black belt before they graduate.
The Japanese university club is composed entirely of college students, so the training can be extremely rigorous with little or no concern for the health risks of the participants. Also, the students have plenty of time to train. Japanese universities are well known as institutions in which students accomplish next to nothing. The members of a Japanese university karate club have time to train three hours per day six days per week without interruption. Training is relentless and the sweat pours as if over a waterfall.