Samurai Toddler Halloween Costume

Here are photos of my 2 1/2 year old son in his complete samurai costume for Halloween 2006. After his excellent pirate costume last year, I planned to top myself by having him go as Bruce Lee in Game Of Death but gave up after deciding sewing Spandex was beyond my ability, at least for now, though I did manage to acquire a pair of yellow nunchaku. We aren't Japanese but at this age he can pass for any sort of Asian character, but since he's been a pirate and devil before, you can see I'm not trying to stick to an Asian theme, I'm just going with what I think would be amazing.

At its base is the Battle Cry Samurai Toddler costume which I purchased online for about $33. It comes with black pants and shirt with vinyl faux lacquered armor, gray belt, and two piece helmet that joins together with Velcro tabs, along with plastic chest demon and plastic helmet dragon, also attached with Velcro.



I made a couple modifications to the original outfit. Unlike in the photo of the product the belt was actually attached to the pants, not the shirt, so I had to remove the one line of stitching and sew it onto the shirt. The stitch is hidden under the knot which you have to tie in the belt in the front. (Yes, a Japanese belt is called an ori.) But even that doesn't make it look like the photo, so I sewed the belt again on either side of the shirt, and now it stays up and in the proper location.

The helmet was too big and not too comfortable for my son, so I used double sided foam tape to secure two 1/2" x 3" sections of closed cell foam in the front and the back. I also punched two holes in the side and strung two pieces of ribbon to make the chin strap, held by simple knots at the top. I should have left a longer end in order to make the knots bigger because they did work themselves out during our Halloween activities.

My goal to make it as authentic as possible, I decided to go ahead and build a sashimono, a type of flag worn by some samurai in battle, attached to their backs. First I measured my son's back, along with estimating the size of the flag to be 12" x 18". If the flag begins at the top of his back, then I had my measurements for the sticks and the flag.

Next I had to decide on the type of material to use for the sticks to hold the flag. At first I thought about 1/2" or 1/4" PVC, but I doubted the rigidity and excessive weight of it. Then I remembered a piece of bamboo in the garage and cut that to size for a test. It seemed sufficient, but I wasn't sure... I considered wooden dowels, but after envisioning using twine to tie the sticks together I realized the bamboo would be perfect. But I couldn't tie them together until I made the flag.

Not wanting to shop for fabric, the most embarrassing part of my sewing hobby, I made the first flag out of some reddish ripstop nylon I had left over from sewing my wife's Ray Jardine UL backpacking sleeping quilt last spring, but it was all wrong, wrinkled, with the rip stop lines and shiny surface. No, I had to do it over, and do it right this time. I searched online for days for flag material, but either they didn't have just the right color, or they wouldn't sell me anything less than 100 yards. I thought about using a Japanese flag, cut down so it would just have the red circle in the middle, and I purchased a cheap Japanese flag off eBay. But the circle turned out to be bigger than the whole flag I intended to make. Finally I decided to buy a Chinese flag, use that as the base, use the white Japanese flag for the attachment strips, and try to figure out some sort of symbol for the middle, later. It turned out great, I ran the bamboo poles through the sleeve strips, tied them tightly with twine, and it sat for a month while I pondered ways to add some sort of design to the flag.

In the meantime I conceived of and created the Oni Head Candy Bucket written about in my previous post, the most important part of this costume.

I purchased a pair of black flip flops after having no luck finding grass mat type Japanese slippers, called zori, in toddler sizes online. I picked a size that would likely fit in two months and also serve next summer, so I wasn't spending $20 just for shoes for a costume.

I decided white socks would add some visual style but wasn't able to find any split toed socks for toddlers either, so I bought a 10 pack of tube socks at Wal-Mart and tried to split and sew a second toe myself. Ha! After ruining a couple of pairs I realized, duh, that you could just mush down the middle and pull out the sides and wear flip flops with regular socks! So that's what he's wearing. And we have plenty of spares if any get dirty tonight.

I purchased two identical plastic swords at $4 each, left one alone for the katana, and altered the other one to make the wakizashi. The end of the sword and the end of the scabbard both have glued on plastic caps, so I just removed those, cut them down, and reattached the caps. And I just chopped off half the blade of the sword. It's actually more of a tanto size?

To attach the flag to my son's back, I went to the historical model and attached it at his belt and at the top of his back. Except I used sticky sided Velcro instead of leather and iron rings. From the sides of the belt back I attached two lengths of 1/2" nylon webbing, then sticky Velcro to create a sturdy double belt, one of Velcro and webbing, the other of cloth, tied in a knot in the back. The Velcro pieces of the belt come together, and the bottom end of the flag pole, with its own stuck-on Velcro strip, connects in between. At the top, another piece of Velcro encircles the pole, and a matching strip is sewn across the shirt and wraps securely around and to the pole.

Finally, for the design of the flag, I decided against painting circles directly on the flag with spray paint and a cardboard template, nor buying some sort of monstrous or Japanese iron-on patch, nor buying iron-on printer paper and copying something from the internet onto a patch and then ironing it on, nor sewing anything on. Instead I found nylon repair tape in 3"x5" strips and various colors. I bought four packs just to get enough black to make the four 3" circles which I cut out and applied to the flag by hand.

The best thing is, the flag stays where you put it, sideways like it's supposed to be, and somehow it doesn't pull on his clothes and choke him like you'd think, at all. Instead the belt takes almost all the weight, and he doesn't even seem to notice it back there. (It weighs 3.7 ounces on my small scale.)



He seems to enjoy the costume, although he's never seen many samurai movies, or very many other movies for that matter, he knows what a sword is for and sometimes insists he wants to "kill Daddy," only slightly to my chagrin?

At the Halloween "parade" this weekend, and while trick or treating Halloween night at the mall and in the neighborhood, about half the people who made comments recognized him as a "samurai" while just as many stopped at "ninja." After hearing me answer them a few times, he began to correct them himself. And when some lady asked who made his costume he spontaneously replied, "Daddy did it." He also spontaneously told another lady, "I have gas," so that was hilarious.

I would have liked to have entered him in some sort of costume contest, but I guess they don't do that sort of thing around here anymore?

Here's a painting that sums up the whole concept of this costume.