They lift their bamboo swords called shinai and slash at the air. They bark out calls and stamp their feet as part of a martial art that was developed in Japan centuries before. It is a noisy, ...

“The biggest thing kendo has given me is a space where I can be physically active and engage with other people,” the club’s vice president, Courtney C. Okwara ’18, says.

The kendo stick, or as it’s known in Japanese culture a shinai, is a light bamboo sword used in the martial art Kendo. It owes its invention to samurais Kamiizumi Nobutsuna (1508-1572) and ...

The shinai are made of four flexible bamboo slats and athletes wear body armor to protect their chest, abdomen and wrists, but van Beek says matches are still painful.

As you may have guessed, the primary focus of the sport is to wield a large bamboo sword called a shinai and use it against your opponent. Whilst a shinai is much softer than other variations of ...

On closer inspection, they are bamboo shinai (swords) but nonetheless intimidating - especially because the warriors, in full-body armour, Samurai-style outfits, screech at every strike.