In Mejiro-dai area in Hachioji City, people hold a neighborhood festival called Mejiro-dai Festival in every summer. Food stalls are prepared by local shops and restaurants, and Mikoshi (portable shrine) parade and performances by local people take place at the festival. In addition to the typical festival types of performances, people have a Samurai performance as shown in the photo.
The people showing the performance are members of a local NPO group at Hachioji Castle Ruins, which is one of the major historical site of the Warring States period in Tokyo. They have Samurai performances at various events and sometimes hold workshops such as "Handmade Samurai armor" for kids.
Their armors are all handmade. Each person in the Samurai group made their own armor. Due to limitations on maerial availability and usability, various types of material were used to make armor such as plastic, aluminum and steel plates for the body of armor, and leather, cloth, strings and old kimono for the accessories.
For example, the person's armor show in the lower photos is made of steel. He said that it took about a year to complete it and as you can see in the photos he used lots of small steel plates and small steel rings to assemble his armor. Since he wanted to have a very real one he tried to make it in the same way Samurai armors were made in old times. The chain mail for the arms are made of small steel rings and he connected them one by one. Apparently the total weight of this armor is 30 kg (about 66 lb).
Of course most people in the group chose lighter types of material to be able to walk and move easily. However it sounds interesting to be able to experience the real heaviness of a Samurai armor. He can feel how tough the real Samurai soldiers were in old times. That would be cool!
This year, in 2017, the Mejiro-day Festival will be held on July 15th and 16th.
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