Building a Better Bogu Bag

By Hiroshi Ikeda
Translation by Jun Akiyama, edited by Ginger Ikeda

Last month's newsletter included a short article on the evolution of the dojo gear bag. In this issue, Hiroshi Ikeda offers some personal recollections and information on the development of the bogu bag for kendo equipment. The old adage, "Necessity is the mother of invention" couldn't be more to the point. There's always "a better way," and you can bet someone is trying to find it. The Bu Jin Bogu Bags, Shinai Cases and Katana Cases smartly address the needs of today's practitioners.

I remember pleasant days when I was a young boy on the small island where I lived with my family, walking to the dojo in my indigo-colored dogi, with shinai in hand. I studied kendo with the captain of the police department, who kindly offered classes after school for children. There were about five or six of us in my class, and we had great fun working and playing hard, learning the art of swordsmanship.

At that time, I was permitted to borrow the dojo's bogu (kendo armor), so I didn't need to bring my own every day. When it came time for tournaments, however, it wasn't quite as easy. The venue for the tournaments was about a twenty-minute walk from my village. My classmates would all gather at the dojo in the morning to organize our equipment - the do (body armor), men (face-mask), kote (leather gauntlets), and tare (thigh protectors). Our sensei taught us to pack these items into the do armor and to transport the entire unit by hooking it over our shinai. All loaded up, shinai and bogu hoisted hobo-style over our shoulders, we kids would march single-file over the dirt road to the tournaments. I still remember the feeling of the shinai pressing down into my small shoulders, burdened by the weight of the bogu.

These days, we can certainly do better than that. And we have good reasons for wanting improvements. For one, personal bogu is seldom left overnight or stored in the dojo; and for another, practitioners today are commuters and travelers, frequently covering long distances to gasshuku and tournaments. Fortunately, technical fabrics and materials are now available to support our changing lifestyle.

At one point, some years ago, the most popular means of transporting bogu was a top-loading drawstring bag made of a thin, woven fabric. Everything fit neatly into the bag and the drawstring was looped over the shinai, which was then slung over one's shoulder. Later, when vinyl came on the market, people realized the applicability of the heavier, water-resistant material, and began making drawstring bags that offered greater protection.

While that seemed like a good idea, to our way of thinking, it didn't go quite far enough. What about the design of the bag itself?

Today we have people transporting expensive, custom fitted bogu to recreation centers and school gymnasiums. People are traveling to class by car, train, subway, or by bike or scooter, or to tournaments by air carriers. At Bu Jin Design, we were contacted by practitioners who wanted a tougher and more convenient, comfortable means of transporting their cumbersome, yet very precious, belongings. Taking their helpful suggestions, we began to investigate. How could we address the various transportation issues, and what kind of bogu bag would be particularly suited to air travel? We set to work.

Bu Jin Design has now been manufacturing a new kind of bogu bag for nearly fifteen years. To date, it has been relatively unknown outside of the United States, but that is changing.

The Bu Jin Design Bogu Bag addresses a variety of circumstances, offering two sizes, two types of nylon backpack fabrics and assorted colors. Multiple straps allow the bag to be carried alternately with a hand-grip, over the shoulder, as a backpack or even in the old way, over the shinai. The bag has a rigid concealed floor insert and five "feet", which elevate it slightly off the ground. Seams are double-stitched and bound, and suede leather reinforces the bottom, to provide years and years of unfailing service. The zippered main compartment offers very easy access to bogu and features lockable zippers. There is even a separate compartment on the front of the bag for one's dogi, thus eliminating the need for another parcel. In the deluxe version, the bag is completely padded with protective closed-cell foam, a bonus for airline travel.