The kendama world: history, tricks and how to start without messing up your first one

If you’ve crossed paths with a kendama and thought “ok, but what is this — a toy or a sport?”, the short answer is: both. And neither. It’s one of those things that looks simple, fools you for ten minutes, and the next thing you know you’re on your fifth try landing the ball on the spike because “this one’s gonna land”. There’s not much more to explain. But there’s history, technique and a pretty serious scene behind it.

What a kendama actually is

A kendama is a Japanese wooden skill toy. Two pieces joined by a string: the ken (the handle with three cups and a spike) and the tama (the ball, with a hole). Sounds basic, but the four landing surfaces of the ken — big cup, small cup, base cup and spike — are the alphabet you build the hundreds of existing tricks with.

The vocab you’ll need if you want to speak the language:

• Ken — the handle.
• Tama — the ball.
• Sarado — the crosspiece that holds the two side cups.
• Big cup and small cup — the large and small cups on the sarado.
• Base cup — the third cup, on the bottom of the ken (opposite the spike).
• Spike (kensaki) — the point where you stab the tama’s hole.
• Ito — the string connecting ken and tama.

Each trick is basically a different way to throw the tama up and catch it on one of those four surfaces. Once you start chaining combos between them, the toy stops being a toy.

A brief history: from Hiroshima to the world

People think the kendama is Japanese and stop there, but the family tree is weirder. The base idea — a stick, a string and a ball — existed centuries earlier in Europe as bilboquet (France, 16th century) and in similar versions across Latin America (boliche, balero). The toy traveled to Japan around the 18th century via trade routes with Europe, and there the two side cups got added, making it what we know today.

The modern kendama, the one you recognize now, was born in 1919 in Hiroshima, when a guy named Hatsume Egusa registered the current sarado design. For decades it was a Japanese schoolyard toy, until the Japan Kendama Association (JKA) was founded in 1975, standardizing dimensions, rules and an official examination system (kyu and dan, like martial arts). That turned it from a pastime into a discipline with a federation and everything.

The second leap came between 2007 and 2012, when brands like Kendama USA, Sweets Kendamas and KROM (Denmark) started making “pro” kendamas with sticky paint, more aggressive shapes and a skate/BMX-inspired philosophy. Videos dropped, comps started, and suddenly the kendama wasn’t a Japanese kid’s toy anymore: it was a street trick that fit in your backpack.

Basic tricks: the beginner ladder

Every kendama player worth their salt has climbed the same ladder. No shortcut:

1. Big cup — grip the ken, toss the ball up, catch it in the big cup. Easy to read, hard to nail clean.
2. Small cup — same thing on the small one. Less forgiving, more control needed.
3. Base cup — the cup on the bottom of the ken. Changes your grip and hand posture.
4. Spike — stabbing the ball’s hole onto the point. The first trick that feels “real”.

Once you have those four down, you enter combo territory. The classic is moshikame, alternating big cup and base cup endlessly, metronome rhythm. Land a good one and you understand why people get hooked. From there you jump to around the world (the four elements in sequence ending in spike), around Japan, lighthouse (balancing the tama on the spike with the base down), lunar, juggle, tornado spike… The list doesn’t end.

The JKA rank system goes from 10th kyu (beginner) to 1st dan (pro), with specific tricks assigned to each level. A lot of people use it as a map to progress without getting lost.

Why it’s so addictive

Kendama runs on the same psychological loop as skating, video games or coffee. You fail a lot, you land sometimes, and every time you land your brain pushes out a tiny hit of dopamine that drives you to try again. A 20-minute session passes like two. And because it fits in any bag and needs no park or pavement, you take it everywhere.

There’s also a meditative side. To land the finer tricks you need to breathe slow, read the tama’s rotation, adjust your knees. It’s one of the few “toys” that improve your proprioception and your patience at the same time. Plenty of skaters carry one as a warm-up before skating or as a break when the session isn’t clicking.

How to pick your first kendama (and where not to buy it)

This is where people mess up. The discount-store kendama — shiny plastic paint, uncured wood ken — frustrates you before you even start. The ball slips, the spike won’t enter, the paint flakes after three days. Nothing lands, you quit.

What actually matters in a quality kendama:

• European beech or Japanese cherry wood: stable, balanced, lasts longer.
• Sticky or clear paint: the tama “grips” the cup for a microsecond longer, forgiving on landings. Forget the old-school glossy paint if you’re serious.
• JKA standard size: ken around 16 cm, tama around 6 cm and 70-80 g. Some brands make jumbo or mini models, but stick to standard to start.
• A brand with a scene behind it: Sweets, KROM, Sol, Kendama USA, Ozora, Tribute. Not snobbery: these are the ones that have spent years polishing balance and paint.

To get a good one without spending hours comparing, the practical move is to go to a specialist online store that only sells kendamas (not the “toys” section of a generic Amazon). A solid European reference is The Joker House, which has been stocking pro models from Sweets, KROM and friends for years, with sticky paint in stock and actual advice if you don’t know where to start. If you’re going to drop 25-40€ on your first kendama, those few extra euros over a discount-store one are the difference between getting hooked and parking it in a drawer.

Kendama and skate: distant cousins but siblings

It’s no accident that a lot of skate people end up with a kendama in hand. They share DNA: urban culture, pro videos, DIY brands, contests, and above all that loop of failing a hundred times to land one. Skaters like Liam Cooper, Wyatt Bray and the KROM team kids move between both worlds effortlessly. Sweets has dropped full series with skate-style graphics. And if you skate, the first weeks of kendama will dangerously remind you of the first weeks learning to ollie: same curve, same frustration, same rush when it finally clicks.

If you’re tempted to try one, no need to overthink it: JKA standard, sticky paint, brand with a name. The rest is repetition. And like everything worth doing, the first month is rage-inducing, the second one you start to get it, and by the third you’re explaining to a friend why their bazaar kendama was never going to land properly.