10% OFF on all Bokken, Shoto, Jo & Tanto Sets

Summer is here, the weather is getting warmer here in Japan and humidity is rising fast with the rainy season, but that won't stop us to practice! The pandemic situation is still evolving all around the globe and if things seem to get better in some countries, it's not yet the case in Japan with the vaccination campaign having a hard time kicking off. The Olympics that will finally be held in Tokyo in July comes with its own sanitary issues, and it is very likely Japan's state of emergency gets extended until the end of August.

Due to the complicated situation in the wood industry and the shortage of raw material, it's been a while that we couldn't offer a discount on our wooden weapons. If you haven't read it yet, please check out our article on this topic: "Japanese Wooden Weapons Craftsmanship, the Beginning of the End".
But good news, we received a lot of stock recently so we decided to offer a 10% discount on all Bokken, Shoto, Jo & Tanto Sets for this month's special offer. If you haven't had the opportunity to renew your equipment in a while and you want to practice with brand new japan-made Bokken, Shoto, Jo, & Tanto, we have everything you need.

You will notice a major change on our website! In 2021, with concerns for the workers, all workshops greatly reduced the number of urethane varnished weapons and replaced the finish by a "Candle Wax". Seido is now transitioning to a new finish offer for the majority of its weapons. From now on, for almost all our weapons, you will have the choice between a Standard Finish or a Seido Special Finish:

• The standard finish means that we complete the workshop finish with Camelia oil treatment by default. We do not apply any additional polishing for this finish, so some weapons might have a slightly rough surface.
• The Seido special finish means that we first apply a Camelia oil polish (oiling and sanding the weapons with oiled sandpaper), then we finish the weapon with high quality beeswax. This finish makes the wood as smooth as it can be and guarantee an excellent protection for several months.

The standard finish is offered at the same cost we used to offer the varnish finish (no price increase). However, as the Seido special finish requires much more polishing work as well as high quality made in Japan beeswax, we had to revise our pricing for this option. This is one of the reasons why we decided to offer a discount on the weapons sets. It was important for us that if you were considering buying new equipment, the change of pricing wouldn't affect your choice.

Note that for all products for which we still have stock with varnish finish, we have kept the varnished option and display the stocks we have for each model. We expect lots of orders with this discount, so if you'd like to purchase varnished weapons, it's now or never!

This offer will end on July 29th, 3 pm JPT.

June report

In parallel to the big update we previously mentioned, we continued to work on several projects and added new products to the website!

• In our "Budo, A way of life" Series, we just published our interview with Jessica Gerrity. We talked about Kyudo, horseback archery, life in Japan, and much more. Watch it now on our YouTube Channel.
• Speaking of YouTube, we will soon release an exclusive interview with Mitsuhiro Tokusanai, one of the very last Bogu artisan (Kendo's armors) in Japan. This interview was filmed back in 2019 but unfortunately had to stay on hold until now, as we were counting on another Bogu expert (Baptiste Tavernier) to help us with the editing! It's coming soon so stay tuned!
• Our series of traditional arts has received a lot of success, so we added three new Shikishi by artist Fuh-Mi: Zen" with Enso (zen circle), "Kizuna" (bond), and "Shoshin" (beginner's mind).
  Fuh-Mi also realized a beautiful Kakejiku with "Shu-ha-ri" calligraphed. Shuhari (守破離) describes the stages of learning martial arts, from beginner to mastery. Check it out now
• We added a new font for belt integrated embroideries. Integrated embroideries, made before the belt is sewn, are particularly difficult to keep well centered. Our workshop is renowned to be one of the best of the best, and we finally convinced them to accept the  Gyoshotai font, a font a little more stylized than the regular Kaishotai one. This option is now available on all belts.
• Finally, Seido will be welcoming two new staff members this July, including one who already worked here in the past and who will certainly bring - again - a significant value to the team. Stay tuned, we'll present them once they've acclimated a little to their new environment.

That's it for this month, enjoy the discounts, and see you soon on SeidoShop.com!