I've always been fond of the section in C.W. Nicol's
Moving Zen that addressed the problem. Two Canadian students at the Shotokan karate dojo where Nicol trained in Japan, were in tolerably rude, rowdy and - worst of all - totally devoid of any sense of personal hygiene. Nicol says:
I don't know how often they bathed, but certainly neither of them ever washed their karategi. Soon everybody complained of the stink...The stench was overpowering. Angered students time and time again tossed the offending uniforms out the window. Even Donn Draeger got to hear about it and had words with them, to no avail.
Eventually, Nicol complained to one of the senior instructors, twice, and resolution of the issue was attempted by warnings from the sensei, and then, after the offending two ignored those, their expulsion.
Really, the whole issue of hygiene is a pan-social one, not restricted to the dojo. It seems that even the advice columns in the newspaper often feature complaints from some poor soul who has to sit next to a stinky person at work, has a loved one with bad hygiene habits, or other olfactory issue.
Let's face it, we are a social species that uses senses to discern social clues and cues, and draws conclusions about others from them. We respond to the way people look, smell and sound, usually in about that order. But some people are clueless about social cues and their meanings, and have to be taught (they likely never were taught by their parents or early peers). If we care about the person who wears the stinky keikogi, has a booger constantly hanging from his nostril, or laughs loudly and in an equine fashion, we try to help them by gently (at first) bringing the matter to their attention and letting them know the impact it is having on those around him or her.
In Nicol's book, he states that the two putrid students were heading for a serious beating from dan-level dojo members, probably primarily for the disrespect the stinkers showed toward their dojo, teachers and dojo mates, and secondarily for the stench itself. They were lucky that they were expelled before that came to pass.
Most of the time, people are fairly open to suggestion and may not even know that they have a problem until it's mentioned. Our sense of smell hits a fatigue point after experiencing a certain odor/chemical combination for a short period of time, which is why we often can't smell ourselves. That's where friends can be very helpful in getting us back on the right path. That goes for the booger thing, too.
