The World of Fencing

28 Jun 2006 Category: Features, Graphics

Ching-ching… Ching-ching… what a strange sound I hear on my way to work every day… The other day, I decided to find out where this sound comes from exactly and found myself in front of a little shop called Japan Fencing Kenkyu-kai… Now fencing is not exactly the kind of sport everyone is into in Japan these days (super detailed information on Wikipedia here, but the old fashioned posters, rarely seen uniforms and tools at the shop made me curious so I had a closer look. Just when I gave in to total imagination losing myself in a big hall surrounded by faceless people in white uniforms stepping forwards and backwards and suddenly… ATTACK! - the owner of the shop tapped on my shoulder and asked me to step inside…

Written by Chiemi

For those of you who slowly start to get board of watching football all day, let me introduce the mysterious world of fencing!

Fencing is a sport played by two opponents holding a shiny, sharp weapon to attack each other. No worries - no one dies these days! All you have to do is to hit the other person as often as you can within a time limit.

To win, you don’t just need the ability to attack but also the skill to protect yourself…. well! That goes without saying!

There are 3 different fencing styles also using three different named weapons: Foil, Épée and Sabre. (…isn’t it nice, that with things feeling kind of old-fashioned and elegant French just works so well!)

Foil means ’splendor’ or ‘flower’ in French. When two players fight it almost looks like dancing. For this style, the players can only attack the bust but not the head or arms. Foil is the most popular style in Japan.

Sabre still keeps the romantic idea of fencing between mounted nomads: the lower half of your body is considered as their horse so you can not attack there. The entire upper body counts!

Épée is not as fast and popular as Foil, but is certainly the easiest one to understand: hit anywhere you can! The entire wired body counts the hits from your electric swords.

Those were the very very very basics. Now let’s take a look at some fencing goods at the Japan Fencing Kenkyu-kai.

First of all some mysterious masks (still kept the medieval flair, don’t you think?) and pair of gloves.

The fencing uniform is separated in different parts. Most important is that players wear a metal jacket so that the electronic scoring equipment can measure whether you got hit or not. If you have ever seen a fencing match, you’ll know why they use those: the game is incredibly fast and the weapons so thin that is is impossible to see where and if someone got hit or not.

Looking at this jacket, I know where I would get my inspirations from for my next fashion collection… Actual purpose always creates the most stylish shapes!

Fencing pants or so called breeches together with a surpsisingly un-white elbow protector.

These shoes below are actually for kids. The picture on the right shows one of the electronic scoring equipments. When hitting your other player with your weapon the electronic scoring equipment lights up and the buzzer makes a sound.

Now how about some fencing graphics? They had a very nostalgic collection of European fencing posters hanging in their office.

Even if fencing is not a hugely popular sport compared to disciplines such as soccer, but it’s elite-feel does inspire! Here are some stylish stamps, too!

Finally, when reaching my cool seat back at the office, I stumbled upon this ultimate product for all fencing fans: the ‘Maxheater’ designed by Swiss designer Matti Walker for StadlerForm. Well, I would much prefer a fencing mask inspired fan than a heater at this time of the year, but still wanted to share that with you!

We certainly only scratched a tiny bit of the surface here, but hope you enjoyed our little introduction into fencing design today.

41 Comments

1. Gotta say a big thanks to your curious nature. Great article. Never seen fencing for real only on tv at the olympics,but youve made me curious I may have to give it a try.

   Nice \o/

   Posted by: genome on June 29th, 2006 at 1:55 am

2. I fenced for five years starting in high school. Fencing on tv and at the olympics just looks odd to me. It’s all very athletic and all about scoring points; it doesn’t look like real fencing to me.

   Posted by: Mike on June 29th, 2006 at 12:23 pm

3. Aah, not only lots of action but styling too.

   Posted by: Paavani on June 29th, 2006 at 8:46 pm

4. I just saw your wonderful posters. I am an American fencer, and fencing teacher. Thank you for introducing fencing to Japan! :)

   Posted by: Natalie on September 1st, 2006 at 11:41 am

5. Well Fencing is a good Art but for only those who know it. :)

   Posted by: John on January 21st, 2007 at 5:54 pm

6. Nice article and nice to see the design inspired by fencing.

   Posted by: Fencing Craig on June 7th, 2007 at 2:00 am

7. wow I’ve always loved watching fencing it looks so fun. I’d love to try it :)

   Posted by: olivia on July 19th, 2007 at 8:43 am

8. Hello,
   I’m Italian Fencing Coach.
   I’m looking for Fencing Club to invite at International Fencing Cadet Tournament (under 17) in Italy. The winners can win a Piaggio’s CUB!!! If you like to receive other information write me csnavacchio@tiscali.net
   Thanks a lot.

   mario

   Posted by: Mario on August 4th, 2007 at 1:53 am

9. Thanks for this informations. yararli bilgiler icin cok tesekkurler. (escuse me my english is bad.)

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