Japan’s Kojima, with its proud Jeans Street, draws fans of vintage, deep-blue denim

KOJIMA, Japan (AP) — Denim, that All-American material, is all about being Japanese within the city of Kojima, the place the primary highway is called Denims Road, with actual pairs of pants flapping like flags overhead.

Some would name this spot in southwestern seaside Okayama Prefecture a mecca of denims, the place followers from world wide make pilgrimage. The soda merchandising machines on the prepare station are plastered with the picture of denims. The roads are painted blue, with the strains on the edges pink and white, the trademark of Kojima denims’ seams.

With some 40 denims producers and shops, together with denim-themed cafes, the world attracts about 100,000 guests a 12 months, in response to the Japan Nationwide Tourism Group.

Japanese denims are usually high-end, darkish and sturdy. Though a tiny a part of the worldwide denims market, they’ve carved out a distinct segment with a fame for craftsmanship. Kojima gave beginning to widespread manufacturers like Large John, with roots courting to the Forties, and now provides worldwide vogue manufacturers, together with Gucci.

“The Japanese business has established a manner of denim from a way more connoisseurship and gathering method” than a mass advertising one, says Emma McClendon, assistant professor of vogue research at St. John’s College in New York.

The ‘artwork of constructing issues’ applies to denims, too

In Kojima, you is likely to be in for a disappointment in case you count on the glamour of a vogue heart. Denims Road is quaint and uncrowded. Every firm within the area is comparatively small, hiring about 100 folks.

What one can find are folks taking satisfaction in “monozukuri,” or “making issues,” connoting a loyal, laborious consideration to element. It’s an ethic entrenched all through Japan, from massive carmakers to the native tofu retailer.

“Extra like making a kimono” is the way in which Yoshiharu Okamoto, a dyeing craftsman at Kojima-based producer Momotaro Denims, places it.

His arms and nails are tinged blue from dipping threads of Zimbabwean cotton into an enormous pail of dye.

He is aware of by scent and really feel the precise state of the indigo, which he compares to a residing factor. He swears it’s a 365-days-a-year job, because the dye must be checked and blended every single day.

“It’s not that simple to get this particular shade,” Okamoto instructed The Related Press throughout a latest tour of the manufacturing services. “It’s my life.”

The darkish indigo hue of Made-in-Japan denim, a lot of it hailing from Kojima, is so distinctive it has earned the title “Japan blue,” often known as “tokuno blue,” which interprets to “particularly concentrated blue.”

Count on to pay extra for Kojima denim

Denims made right here aren’t low cost, ranging in value from a comparatively reasonably priced 33,000 yen ($230) per pair to these made by high craftsmen, which go for 200,000 yen ($1,400) or extra.

Thomas Stege Bojer, founding father of Denimhunters, a web based website dedicated to denim, says Japanese manufacturers use “uncooked denim” that ages properly and lasts a very long time. He echoed the “ sluggish clothes” motion that has arisen in response to cheaper, mass-produced garments.

“We simply make too many garments. The cycle is simply too quick, I believe, and we have to decelerate,” Bojer stated from his dwelling close to Copenhagen, Denmark, the place the partitions are adorned with denims.

As McClendon, the style professor, put it, the Japanese business is “shifting the dialog round denims to be about heritage parts, about educating shoppers on historic particulars as a type of high quality.”

Momotaro Denims, for example, include a lifetime guarantee: Tears and different issues get mounted without cost, inside purpose. Japan Blue Co., which runs Momotaro, a model that debuted in 2006, stated annual gross sales totaled about 1.6 billion yen ($11 million) for the most recent 12 months. About 40% of gross sales come from exterior Japan.

A area with a stitching and industrial historical past

Like craftsman Okamoto, Shigeru Uchida, a loom specialist, and Naomi Takebayashi, who works at a stitching machine, imagine they’ve particular expertise they need to guard and hand to the following era. They spoke whereas main a gaggle of youthful sewers.

The 2 say they’ve a particular relationship with their machines. They hearken to the machines’ sounds to make every day changes.

The clattering energy looms are classic Toyodas, from the weaving firm that preceded automaker Toyota. Spare components are laborious to search out. There’s one loom operated by hand, used for merchandise that the corporate says boast a novel texture.

Masataka Suzuki, president and chief working officer at Japan Blue, says the commercial historical past of the area is a supply of energy, centered round stitching heavy materials, together with navy garments and obi sashes for kimonos, in addition to the cotton and indigo-dyeing native to the world.

That’s why the denims are for all times, Suzuki stated, fading and creasing, relying on how they’re worn and the way the wearer lives.

“We wish to create a product that could be a testomony to an individual’s life,” he stated.

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Yuri Kageyama is on X: