• What is kendo?
  • OK, then what is kenjutsu?
  • Isn't bokken technique taught in aikido?
  • What is kumdo?
  • Are there different styles of kendo/kenjutsu?
• What is iaido?
  • OK, then what is iaijutsu?
  • Are there different styles of iaido/iaijutsu?
• What about batto-jutsu, tameshi-giri, shinkendo and others?
  • OK, so if they're watered down, why study kendo or iaido?
• How do I find a school?
  • How do I evaluate a school?
• Are there any other net.resources?
• How did kendo originate?
• How did iaido originate?
• What are those funny clothes kendo and iaido players wear?
  • Why do they wear hakama?
  • What virtues do the hakama pleats represent?
• How is a Japanese sword constructed?
  • How many layers in a Japanese sword?
  • What are the different types of Japanese swords?
• What sort of weapons are used for practice?
• What is the armour for kendo?
  • How much does kendo armour cost?
  • What are you paying for in those expensive sets, anyways?
  • What are the two methods used to tie the men-himo?
• Are kendo and iaido dangerous?
  • What are the common injuries?
  • Does a shinai blow hurt?
• How does the ranking work in kendo and iaido?
  • What are the names of the ranks?
  • What is the traditional system of ranking?
• Kendo competition
  • World kendo championships results
• I want to buy a Japanese sword. What do I do?
  • How much do they cost?
  • Where can I find swords to purchase?
  • How can I tell if it's a good sword?
  • How can I tell if the sword is right for me?
  • Are there special concerns for iaido?
• Bibliography
• Organization Contacts
  • Kendo Federations
  • Sword Clubs
• Equipment Suppliers

Japanese Sword Arts FAQ Version 2.7

11. What is the armour for kendo?

The armour protects the head, throat, wrists and abdomen; these are the only legal targets. The helmet is called a men. An oval steel cage protects the face; a throat guard extends down from the cage and provides the "tsuki" target - about 3" by 4". Padding for the top of the head, ears and shoulders is attached to the cage. Traditionally the padding would be horse hair but modern bogu uses a thick felt. The padding is covered with cotton fabric and compressed with close stitching. How close the stitches are together is a common indicator of quality: 5 mm for an OK machine stitched set, 3 mm for a really good machine stitched, 1 bu (about 3mm) for top of the line hand-stitched. The whole affair is tied on with long woven strings. The "men" target is the top of the head, from corner to corner, as it were. A cotton towel called a tenugui is worn under the men for comfort and to soak up the sweat. Tenugui are printed with a design, usually kanji, and given as souvenirs. Equipment manufacturers also give them as promotional items.

The tare, also of felt and cloth construction, protects the hip and groin. There is no legal target on the tare. Usually the tare will have the kendoka's name and dojo affiliation displayed (this is a requirement for tournament competition) on the main flap via an embroidered cover called a zekken.

Overlapping the tare is the chest protector, called the do. The do is constructed of from 48 to 64 bamboo staves, covered in leather and lacquered. Cheap ones are fibreglass. The do protects the entire front of the chest, and extends around the sides to protect from roughly the hip bone to the first couple of ribs. The abdominal portion of the do is the "do" target. The portion covering the heart (called the mune) becomes a legal "tsuki" target in certain positions.

The kote protect the hands and wrists. The backs of the hands and knuckles are covered in heavy padding with a leather exterior. In good quality kote this padding is deer hair, whilst lower grade kote are stuffed with cotton or synthetic wadding. The portion of the kote covering the wrists is constructed like the men padding. The palms are covered with a layer of leather, which is smoke cured deer hide in high grade kote. They look like boxing gloves crossed with medieval gauntlets.

11a. How much does kendo armour cost?

A decent used set (if you can find one) might cost $US200. The minimum you could expect to pay for a set from Japan you would be happy with for some years would be $US600 (5mm with fibreglas do, discounted 50% from list). Cheaper Taiwanese sets could be had for about $US400, but the money would be better put towards a good Japanese set. At the high end, complete sets can be $US10,000 or more.

Fortunately, many clubs have old sets of armour available to loan or rent. If they did not do so, they would have trouble attracting new students. Sooner or later you will be expected to shell out.

11.2 What are you paying for in those expensive sets, anyways?

11.2.1 Futon

The futon is the padding on the kote barrel, top of the men and tare which may be hand or machine-stitched. Machine-stitching is at the low end. Quality is largely determined by how far the rows are apart, the closer the better (and more expensive). 8mm is OK for little kids, 6 mm might work for older kids, 5 mm is bare minimum for adults, 4 mm is a decent adult set, 3 mm is a good adult set, 2.5 or 2 mm is the high end of machine stitching.

Hand-stitching is the next level. Hand stitching is measured in bu, 1 bu is about 3mm. 2.5 bu is the low end, and hardly worth it. 1.5 bu is the preferred choice for many people. Stitching as tight as 1 bu is available: some people like it, other people find it too hard and difficult to break in. The hand-stitching process allows the padding to be much harder than machine stitching, so a 1 bu hand-stitched is way harder than 3 mm machine.

There's varying qualities of hand-stitching, you can use a triangular needle or a round needle and there's a couple flavours of stitching patterns. The triangular needle makes the stitching process easier (thus faster and cheaper) but the edges of the needle cut and weaken the cloth. Round needles do a better job but are much harder to get through the cloth, therefore the cost is higher. You can also stitch using a triangular shape or a square shape like so:

             __    __
 /\  /\     |  |  |  |
/  \/  \ VS |  |__|  |

The second style is called nagazashi and is a little more complex than the drawing above but you get the general idea. I'm not sure what the triangular style is called, but obviously it uses less thread and is quicker. The nagazashi style makes better little pads, makes the tension on the thread even and thus less likely to break, and does not unravel even if the thread breaks.

11.2.2 Quality of materials

You can use various grades of cotton and leather. At the low end, they use mostly cotton with a little leather and synthetic leather where they can get away with it. As they move up, they start to use better cotton and more leather. A cheap kote has cowskin palm, and the "head" or the part over the knuckles is part cotton, part leather. Better kote have a head completely covered in leather, better still have deerskin palm (more flexible, doesn't tend to get as stiff with use), top end use very high quality leather and reinforce high wear areas with more leather. Same for the men and tare. At the high end, you'll see leather at the top of the flaps of the tare and on top of the men, and of course the corner reinforcements will be high quality leather, not synthetic (or even non-existant on the low end).

11.2.3 Men-gane (mask)

As you move up the line, the men-gane gets of better quality. At the low end, it's steel and at the high end it's titanium, and in between there's several grades of alloy that are used.

11.2.4 Doh

At the low low end for kids, they're plastic. As you move up, they move into fibreglass and then eventually bamboo. You can get 43, 50 or 60 slat doh, the more slats the better. The quality of the construction varies a lot, and also the quality of the materials, including the bamboo, leather, laquer and stitching used.

11.2.5 Decoration

The quality of the decoration is usually built into the price structure. At the low end, there's not much for nice finishing details, and the choice of colours is limited to 1 or maybe 2. As you move up the ladder, they offer you more choices of stitching styles and colours, and also styles of mune (the top part of the doh). At the very high end, you can specify exactly what you want, send them a picture and they'll do it for you. The doh-dai (the contact area of the doh) finish is black by default, and at the high end the default is roiro, a super-high quality black laquer finish. You can also pay extra to get various laquer colours, textured finishes, wood finishes (cherry is very very nice) or sharkskin.

11.2.6 General comments

A 3 or 4 mm machine stitched bogu works just fine, there isn't any real need to go better than that, unless you want to. Problem being, after a while most people want to. The nice stuff is really nice, and it does work better, there's just a point of diminishing returns. After you get the 1.5 or 1.2 bu nagazashi-stitched with round needle with titanium men and 60 slat doh, you've pretty much hit the top as far as function goes, any more money to be spent goes on all-round quality or just making it prettier. Regarding the all-round quality: most bogu are assembled in Japan out of parts made elsewhere, and it shows. 10 years ago this wasn't the case and the quality was much higher. At the high end, you're still buying stuff entirely made in Japan, and that's part of why the price is so high.

11.3 What are the two methods used to tie the men-himo?

The most common style of tieing the men has the himo attaching to the fourth bar from the bottom, then looping around the back, through the top and back again. This is called the Kanto style after the region where it is popular. The second style sometimes seen has the himo attached to the top, looping around the back, wrapping around the nodo, then back and through the top again before finally coming back to be tied. This is called the Kansai style after the region where it is popular. Kanto is the eastern, Tokyo side and Kansai is the western side including Kyoto, Osaka and Kyushu. I've used both styles: Kansai is stronger but takes longer to tie. Either works well.