Everlasting blues: Pairs of jeans flapping over Jeans Street in Kojima. (Inset) Okamoto showing how he dyes the threads in indigo for denim at Momotaro Jeans. — AP
DENIM, that “All-American” fabric, is all about being Japanese in the town of Kojima, where the main road is named Jeans Street, with real pairs of pants flapping like flags overhead.
Some would call this spot in south-western seaside Okayama Prefecture a mecca of jeans, where fans from around the world make pilgrimage.
The soda vending machines at the train station are plastered with the image of jeans. The roads are painted blue, with the lines at the edges pink and white, the trademark of Kojima jeans’ seams.With some 40 jeans manufacturers and stores, including denim-themed cafes, the area draws about 100,000 visitors a year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organisation.
Japanese jeans tend to be high-end, dark and durable. Although a tiny part of the global jeans market, they have carved out a niche with a reputation for craftsmanship. Kojima gave birth to popular brands like Big John, with roots dating to the 1940s, and now supplies international fashion brands, including Gucci.
“The Japanese industry has established a way of looking at denim from a much more connoisseurship and collecting approach” than a mass marketing one, says Emma McClendon, assistant professor of fashion studies at St John’s University in New York.
In Kojima, you might be in for a disappointment if you expect the glamour of a fashion centre. Each company in the region is relatively small, hiring about 100 people.
What you will find are people taking pride in monozukuri, or “making things”, connoting a devoted, laborious attention to detail. It is an ethic entrenched throughout Japan, from big carmakers to the local tofu store.
“More like making a kimono” is the way Yoshiharu Okamoto, a dyeing craftsman at Kojima-based manufacturer Momotaro Jeans, puts it.
His hands and nails are tinged blue from dipping threads of Zimbabwean cotton into a big pail of dye.
He knows by smell and feel the right state of the indigo, which he compares to a living thing. He swears it is a year-round job, as the dye has to be checked and mixed every day.
“It’s not that easy to get this special color,” Okamoto said during a recent tour of the production facilities. “It’s my life.”
The dark indigo hue of Made-in-Japan denim, much of it hailing from Kojima, is so distinctive it has earned the name “Japan blue”, also known as “tokuno blue”, which translates to “especially concentrated blue”.
Masataka Suzuki, president and chief operating officer at Japan Blue, says the industrial history of the region is a source of strength, centred around sewing heavy fabrics, including military clothes and obi sashes for kimonos, as well as the cotton and indigo-dyeing native to the area.
That’s why the jeans are for life, Suzuki said, fading and creasing, depending on how they are worn and how the wearer lives.
“We want to create a product that is a testament to a person’s life,” he said. — AP
