What is a hakama and who wears it?

A hakama is the skirt-like pants that some Aikidoka wear. It is a traditional piece of samurai clothing. The standard gi worn in Aikido as well as in other martial arts such as Judo or Karate was originally underclothes. Wearing it is part of the tradition of (most schools of) Aikido.

The hakama were originally meant to protect a horseman's legs from brush, etc., -- not unlike a cowboy's leather 'chaps'. Leather was hard to come by in Japan, so heavy cloth was used instead. After the samurai as a class dismounted and became more like foot-soldiers, they persisted in wearing horseman's garb because it set them apart and made them easily identifiable.

There were different styles of hakama though. The type worn by today's martial artists - with "legs" - is called a joba hakama, (roughly, horseriding thing into which one steps). A hakama that was kind of like a tube skirt - no legs - another and the third was a very long version of the second. It was worn on visits to the Shogun or Emperor. The thing was about 12-15 feet long and was folded repeatedly and placed between the feet and posterior of the visitor. This necessitated their shikko ("knee walking") for their audience and made it extremely unlikely that they could hide a weapon (retainers suited them up) or rise quickly to make an attack.

The 7 folds in the hakama (5 in the front, 2 in the back) are said to have the following symbolic meaning:

Yuki = courage, valor, bravery Jin = humanity, charity, benevolence Gi = justice, righteousness, integrity Rei = etiquette, courtesy, civility (also means bow/obeisance) Makoto = sincerity, honesty, reality Chugi = loyalty, fidelity, devotion Meiyo = honor, credit, glory; also reputation, dignity, prestige

In many schools, only the black belts wear hakama, in others everyone does. In some places women can start wearing it earlier than men (generally modesty of women is the explanation - remember, a gi was originally underwear).

O Sensei was rather emphatic that EVERYONE wear the hakama, but he came from a time/culture not too far from wearing hakama as standard formal wear.

Saito Sensei, about hakama in O Sensei's dojo in the old days:

"Most of the students were too poor to buy a hakama but it was required to wear one. If they couldn't get one from an older relative, they would take the cover off an old futon, cut it, dye it, and give it to a seamstress to make into a hakama.

Since they had to use cheap dye, however, after awhile the colorful pattern of the futon would start to show through and the fluff from the futon would start to work its way out of the material."

Shigenobu Okumura Sensei, "Aikido Today Magazine" #41:



"In postwar Japan many things were hard to get, including cloth. Because of the shortages, we trained without hakama. We tried to make hakama from air-raid blackout curtains but because the curtains had been hanging in the sun for years, theknees turned to dust as soon as we started doing suwariwaza. We were constantly patching these hakama. It was under those conditions that someone came up with a suggestion: "Why don't we just say that it's okay not to wear a hakama until you're shodan?" This idea was put forward as a temporary policy to avoid expense. The idea behind accepting the suggestion had nothing to do with the hakama being a symbol for dan ranking."

Mitsugi Saotome Sensei, "The Principles Of Aikido":