Tracking down the world’s biggest kendama

If you’ve already watched a few kendama videos on YouTube then you might have been recommended this video of Dave Mateo playing a giant kendama from the Yoyo Factory at The North American International Toy Fair.

This is the video that made us ask the question – what is the world’s biggest kendama?

Our Requirements

It must unequivocally resemble a kendama.
It must currently exist.
It must theoretically be playable by human or machine.

After completing our search, it was clear there were a few frontrunners for the title that we needed to investigate:

Yoyo Factory

We started with the most obvious contender - the Yoyo Factory itself. In May 2021 we reached out to the Yoyo Factory to find out the specifications of the kendama from its iconic video. Below are some amazing photos provided by the team.

The team confirmed the ken was cut from foam block and a shell was applied to the outside, before being painted to appear like wood.

The bearing inside the tama is actually just a regular sized tama. But, most importantly, the height from the bottom of the base cup to the top of the tama measures 157.5cm or 62 inches tall. So there we have the world’s biggest kendama, right? Wrong!

The Unbeatable Banzuke

We then saw Sol Kendama's blog post highlighting a life-size kendama from a gameshow called ‘The Unbeatable Banzuke’. The episode first aired sometime between 1995 and 2002. On close inspection, the kendama is a very similar size to Yoyofactory’s. But how can we know the exact height?

Well, here we see comedian Osaru (real name Ōmori Akira) measuring 171cm and standing next to the giant kendama. However, the camera is at an angle looking up, and in both pictures Osaru isn’t stood in a way that we can accurately estimate the height. So we took a break from trying to solve this mystery.

Youme Shopping Mall – Hatsukaichi City

Then, one day, while scrolling the #kendama tag on Instagram in June, we saw a post from @trip_hatsukaichi, the official Hatsukaichi City tourism account. Another giant kendama!

We reached out to the Instagram account, enquiring if this was the world’s biggest. They told us this kendama can be found at the ‘YouMe Shopping Mall’, but that it isn’t the world’s biggest. They directed us to the ‘Miyahama Grand Hotel’, where they allegedly do display the world’s biggest kendama.

Hatsukaichi City is the birthplace of Kendama, and location of the Kendama World Cup, so if anywhere has the biggest kendama, it’s likely to be there.

Miyahama Grand Hotel

So on July 30th 2021, after hiking Mount Fuji, we set off for Hatsukaichi. 9 hours driving later, we arrived at the hotel for a one night stay, and there it was in the lobby. Made in the summer of 2014 by Mr Tomita and Japanese TV channel ‘Fuji TV’ during the Kendama World Cup, but given to the hotel 3 years ago, the Kendama measures 270cm (8′ 10″) and weighs 270cm with the tama on the ken.

The ken is made from locally sourced wood and the tama is made of styrofoam. When we asked, they told us nobody has ever played it, and with it weighing 270kg, it would be difficult. But we think this kendama could be played by machine under the right circumstances. It also currently exists and 100% resembles a kendama, meeting our requirements and making this the world’s biggest kendama.

Afterword

When we asked our Instagram followers to guess the height of the world’s biggest kendama, some people sent us photos of this.

Made of solid wood, this kendama can be found at the Miyajima service station on the highway through Hatsukaichi. Although not the biggest kendama, it’s a possible contender for the Worlds Heaviest. That’s a mystery to be solved for another day.

TL;DR – The Worlds Biggest Kendama is 270cm tall (8′ 10″) and can be found at the Miyahama Grand Hotel, Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima prefecture, Japan.