Zōkin gake - Cleaning the floors

"A dōjō becomes a special place only by the respect that the students as a group, or
community, have for it. If everyone believes that it is a place to study and perfect the self, then
how could it be kept clean by others? It is our place. We are making a shared commitment to it
and to our practice. With a shared commitment comes a shared responsibility, including that
for keeping the place spotless. After each class, students together, regardless of rank, wipe the
floor down with a rag. This old tradition dates from the earliest times and is maintained in all
traditional dōjō. This action, which is functional, is also symbolic of the need to make our egos
smaller. No matter what a student does on the outside—doctor, lawyer, businessman—he/she
can clean the dōjō alongside the people with whom he/she trains."

- Nakamura Tadashi, Karate: Technique & Spirit

"After each class the students closest to the door would rush out to get buckets of water and
cloths. As many as could grabbed a cloth, dampened it in the water and placed it on the floor.
Both hands were placed on the cloth, and with his buttocks high and his body almost in a
“push-up” position, the washer ran the width of the dojo, cleaning a foot-wide swath. We
raced each other across the dojo in this way, thus strengthening hips, legs and arms, and
sometimes crashing into each other, laughing and panting.

This task was never omitted, and nobody was ever ordered or asked to do it. A few, especially
Westerners, dodged it, but the teachers and sempai always knew, and although they said
nothing, the result of their observations would come out in the quality of individual
instruction. Slackers, dodgers, and those with poor spirit were ignored on the dojo floor."