In the bustling town of Edo, the Kajibashi, Atago, and Shitayakanari Kaidō areas contained a number of stores that specialized in selling bōgu and shinai. In Muta Takaatsu’s "Sho-Koku Kaireki Nichiroku", a travel journal, there is reference to him ordering a leather dō at a shop in Nichikage-cho for the price of one ryō. We can also learn from the text that shinai cost the grand total of 200 mon. The average cost to a kenjutsu practitioner for a shinai at the time, so it seems, was anything from 200 mon to 270 mon.
Close to where many of these shops were concentrated stood the Jikishinkage-ryū Naganuma dōjō. The reason why the Bakufu constructed the Kobusho military academy in this area was in part for naval defence, and also due the fact that the area was swarming with kenjutsu practitioners and equipment suppliers.
There is a delightful picture in Katsushika Hokusai’s "Ehon Azuma Asobi" (1802), which depicts a scene in one such shop. (Diagram 12). At a glance we can see fukuro-shinai and bamboo protective gear hanging from the walls of what really seems to be a traditional armour shop. Through this we can ascertain that it was primarily armour craftsmen who also took care of contemporary training equipment.
Diagram 12
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