They have been open in that they now plan to limit D1 and D2 instructors to 15 each, and C1 and C2 to 30 each. And as these figures show, Gaba is not shy about showing their progress towards this goal. All belts from C1 to D2 have decreased.

The amount of B2 instructors has gone up by six instructors since February. And over the nine months from February to November, the amount of B1 instructors has plummeted from 139 to 96! Even allowing for some instructors leaving the company, that is a huge drop.

The one real growth area is the new level of A2. Introduced in May 2010, as of November 2010 there are 69 A2 instructors, who are getting paid 1600 yen per peak lesson instead of 1500. For instructors who were belt A, it is great that they could get a small pay raise. But given how many B1 instructors have been debelted, a substantial amount of these A2s must actually represent a pay cut, rather than a pay raise.

The cost cutting from late 2008 until the present has effected instructors in many different ways. But rarely is it so obvious than in the belting statistics shown here. Individually, there is nothing that an individual instructor can do about this. But together, we can start to make our voices heard and make a change.