TOKYO — When my 6-year-old son recently joined a local kendo club, I found myself in Yamato Budogu, a family store that first specialized in equipment for the ancient Japanese martial art in the 1930s.
Kendo – the Japanese characters mean “the way of the sword” – is a form of fencing that uses bamboo swords and protective armor. And equipment for what is considered modern kendo originated in the 18th century.
My son needed a beginner’s outfit: a shinai or bamboo sword; a dogi, the kimono-like top; and hakama, wide-leg pants. A uniform for an older or more advanced practitioner has four additional items: a gentlemen, a type of face mask with metal bars to protect the head and shoulders; a do, or breastplate; kote, gloves to cover hands and forearms; and a tare, a thick fabric belt with flaps to protect the hip area.
“I can make every part of the uniform and fix everything,” says Kiichiro Ito, 83, the president of Yamato Budogu Seisakusho and a fake craftsman (bogu is an inclusive term for kendo gear).
His specialty is the men, the face mask. Fabrication begins with two preparatory steps: layering pieces of cotton, wool, and other fabrics to form a protective pad, and wrapping rice straw around the edge of a fabricated metal face grid called the Mengane. The straw forms a base so that the pad can be hand sewn to the grill, and the edges of the whole assembly are then tied with strips of rawhide to reinforce the structure and improve the overall appearance of the piece, said Mr. ito.
The process takes about two weeks to produce the basic model, while more expensive models, requiring finer stitches and decoration, can take as long as three to six months.
Ito also collaborates with other fake artisans in Japan: for example, one of them, in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, specializes in aizome or indigo dye. The craftsman dyes textiles thread by thread and then sends rolls of fabric to Mr. Ito’s workshop, where it is cut and added to protective cushions. (Other indigo-dyed fabrics from artisans in other prefectures are used for the cotton dogi and hakama set.)
The family business was founded in 1936 by Mr. Ito’s grandfather in Aoyama-itchome, an area in southwestern Tokyo. Over the decades, the workshop has moved, shifting to equestrian equipment when some martial arts were banned after World War II, and in the 1970s Mr. Ito was renamed Yamato Budogu.
Mr. Ito joined the company in 1957, at the age of 19, and his younger brother, Tsuyoshi, joined the company a few years later. They took over the store when their father passed away in 1980.
“Kendo is mostly a family business,” Mr. Ito said. “I learned from my father, who was also a fake craftsman. It’s not something you can learn in school. Some specific techniques or skills are related to certain families and are passed on.”
The shop and studio are located in Mr. Ito’s house, in the Shibuya neighborhood, another area in southwestern Tokyo (“We used to be able to see Mount Fuji from here, but now all the buildings block the view.”). The shop, on the ground floor, is so small that two people can barely get in: once they slide open the glass front door, there’s only a small genkan, or entryway, with bamboo swords and uniform pieces stored in display cases.
But when they take off their shoes, get up and walk through a doorway, there is the atelier, a large room of almost 900 square meters and equipped with tatami mats and two long tables where the cutting and sewing is done by Mr. Ito, an apprentice and two female employees, 86 and 73, who are related to Mr. Ito.
Rolls of textiles, bottles of lacquer, cardboard boxes and small wooden drawers filled with tools are crammed into every available space. Until his recent death, a large black and white cat named Fuku roamed or slept by the gas stove.
Mr. Ito usually sits by the window on a zabuton, a Japanese floor cushion, with a blanket on his lap and a small wooden work table nearby. Next to him is another zabuton, but that workspace has been empty for two years since Tsuyoshi Ito’s death. “I wish you could have met my younger brother,” Mr. Ito said. “He was very entertaining and talkative.”
Yean Han, the 33-year-old student, sits opposite Mr. Ito. He’s from Brunei and had met Tsuyoshi Ito at a workshop in Malaysia in 2013. “I’ve been interested in how bogu is made since I was training for kendo,” he said.
When Mr. Han moved to Tokyo in 2016 to study robotics at Waseda University, his frequent visits to the studio slowly turned into a training program.
“I got so interested and of course I just sat here,” said Mr. Han. “Sometimes he would throw little things at me, like ‘Try this, try that,'” he said. (Mr. Han first learned from Mr. Ito’s brother, but now Mr. Ito is training him.)
“We sometimes talk a lot. Other times he just does his job and I sit across from him for an hour or two and just watch,” he said.
Mr. Ito seems to appreciate his apprentice: “Mr. Han is the one who welcomes customers. He speaks very good Japanese.”
Mr. Han said he was still learning skills. “I still have some way to go before I can take full responsibility for making something. What Sensei will do if he creates something and thinks he can entrust me with certain parts of the process, he will ask me to do one part,” he said, referring to Mr. Ito as sensei, an expression of respect for one who has a certain level of mastery. (He doesn’t train anymore, because Mr. Ito gave him a choice: practice kendo or make bogu.)
The handmade bogu of mr. Ito is a rarity: Today, he said, less than one percent of the world’s kendo gear is made in Japan; other Asian countries, such as China and South Korea, produce it. But in the 1970s and 1980s, when kendo was especially popular in Japan, his shop employed 14 employees and distributed to sellers. Now it does business with individual customers.
According to Alexander Bennett† a professor of Japanese history at Kansai University and editor-in-chief of Kendo World magazine, “The golden age of kendo in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s was for children. There would have been a waiting list to get your child into kendo.” Now, however, the country’s low birth rate means there are fewer children, and kendo may not be as appealing as football or baseball.
“Kendo is traditionally known for being disciplined and teaching good manners to children,” he said. “But today parents give their children more freedom of choice and parents no longer see the value of kendo as they used to.” Still, he said, the All Japan Kendo Federation estimates there are currently 1.5 million practitioners in Japan; the population is about 126 million. (By comparison, there were four million to five million practitioners in the 1970s and 1980s.)
Mr. Ito is afraid that the old ways will disappear. “Martial arts are too old school,” he told me. “And compared to other martial arts, kendo is expensive, probably the most expensive, which could be a factor. You have to think about the long-term costs of your son continuing with kendo.”
The simple cotton set and shinai, or my son’s sword, cost less than the equivalent of $100, while his teacher’s clothing, bought from Mr. Ito, cost about $300 and a full outfit, with shinai, $500 to Can cost $1,000 depending on quality.
But well-made bogu can last: Mr. Ito mentioned a customer who has had his uniform for over 40 years. “High-quality handmade items can be repaired and used for a long time,” he said while repairing a kote or glove for a girls’ kendo team at a local high school. The kote was lined with deerskin, which wears quickly and may need to be replaced as many as five times a year as the team practices daily. But Mr. Ito only replaces one small area, so the team doesn’t have to keep buying new ones.
Mr. Ito’s wife, Yasuko, 79, is also part of the business: she used to take care of the deliveries, but now does the administrative tasks. “My wife is in a lot of trouble,” Mr. Ito said, and she’s in charge as they all take a break for oyatsu, or an afternoon snack, at 3:00 p.m. every weekday, and hand out cups of tea and sweets. “The candy is different every day,” said Mr. Han.
Mr. Ito doesn’t take much free time. He said he has no hobbies, but he likes the annual matsuri, a traditional festival held in September in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s entertainment and business districts. “If you let me talk about it, I could talk about it forever,” he said.
Even though the store’s official hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday, Mr. Ito usually works late in the studio. “There is no end time,” he said.
“At my age I’m often asked if I still do this as a hobby or for fun, but I do this to make a living,” he said. “I don’t get pension money like people who used to work for large companies. As a professional, I don’t have that, so I have to keep working.”
“I’m the last fake craftsman in Tokyo,” he said. “When I die, there will be no one.”