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Associated Press

The Japanese town of Kojima is all about denim.
The main road is named Jeans Street, pairs of jeans flap like flags overhead, the drinks vending machines at the railway station are plastered with the image of jeans, and the roads are painted blue, with the lines at the edges pink and white, the trademark colours of the seams in made-in-Kojima jeans.
With some 40 jeans manufacturers and stores, including denim-themed cafes, the area in Okayama prefecture, southwest Japan, draws about 100,000 visitors a year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
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. Jeans Street is quaint and uncrowded. 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.
We want to create a product that is a testament to a person’s life
Masataka Suzuki, president of denim company Japan Blue Co.
“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 365-days-a-year job, as the dye has to be checked and mixed every day.
“It’s not that easy to get this special colour,” Okamoto says 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”.
Jeans made here are not cheap, ranging in price from a relatively affordable 33,000 yen (US$230) per pair to those made by top craftsmen, which go for 200,000 yen or more.
Thomas Stege Bojer, founder of Denimhunters, an online site devoted to denim, says Japanese brands use “raw denim” that ages well and lasts a long time. He echoed the “slow clothing” movement that has arisen in reaction to cheaper, mass-produced clothes.

“We just make too many clothes. The cycle is too fast, I think, and we need to slow down,” Bojer said from his home near Copenhagen, Denmark, where the walls are decorated with jeans.
As McClendon, the fashion professor, puts it, the Japanese industry is “shifting the conversation around jeans to be about heritage elements, about educating consumers on historical details as a form of quality”.
Momotaro Jeans, for instance, come with a lifetime warranty: tears and other problems get fixed free of charge, within reason.
Japan Blue Co., which runs Momotaro, a brand that debuted in 2006, says annual sales totalled about 1.6 billion yen for the latest year. About 40 per cent of sales come from outside Japan.
Like craftsman Okamoto, Shigeru Uchida, a loom specialist, and Naomi Takebayashi, who works at a sewing machine, believe they have special skills they must guard and hand to the next generation. They speak while leading a group of younger sewers.


The two say they have a special relationship with their machines. They listen to the machines’ sounds to make daily adjustments.
The clattering power looms are vintage Toyodas, from the weaving company that preceded carmaker Toyota. Spare parts are hard to find. There is one loom operated by hand, used for products that the company says have a unique texture.
Masataka Suzuki, president and chief operating officer at Japan Blue, says the industrial history of the region is a source of strength, centred on sewing heavy fabrics, including military clothes and obi sashes for kimonos, as well as the cotton and indigo dyeing native to the area.
That is why the jeans are for life, Suzuki says, 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 says.


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Fashion

Japanese jeans with lifetime warranty crafted ‘like making a kimono’ in denim mecca Kojima

A seamstress at Momotaro Jeans makes jeans using a vintage sewing machine. Photo: AP

Jeans hang over Jeans Street in Kojima. The quiet town in western Japan is known for its sustainably produced Japan Blue jeans, which can sell for US$1,400 a pair. Its attention to craftsmanship has drawn luxury brands like Gucci. Photo: AP

A weaver operates a handloom at Momotaro Jeans in Kojima. Photo: AP

Yoshiharu Okamoto, a dyer at Momotaro Jeans, demonstrates dyeing yarn in indigo. Photo:AP

Okamoto shows how he dyes the threads in indigo for denim at Momotaro Jeans. Photo: AP

Naomi Takebayashi, a seamstress for Momotaro Jeans, works on pairs of jeans in Kojima. Photo: AP

Takebayashi says she has a special relationship with the machines, and listens to them to make adjustments. Photo: AP

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Temari balls at a Japanese craft studio in Takamatsu, Japan. Photo: AP

Temari master Eiko Araki at her studio in Takamatsu, Japan. With her Christmas tree decorations, diffusers and more, she is pushing the centuries-old Japanese art into the 21st century. The problem is finding successors to take the mantle. Photo: AP

Sanuki kagari temari balls on display at Araki’s studio. Temari has been practised for centuries all across Japan, with Kagawa prefecture having its own unique brand of the ancient craft. Photo: AP

At Araki’s studio, women stitch as part of the arduous process of making temari. Photo: AP

Various shades of cotton thread used for making temari are stored in shelves at Araki’s studio. Photo: AP

Cotton thread used for Sanuki kagari temari hangs to dry outside at Araki’s studio. Photo: AP

A woman at Araki’s studio stitches a temari ball. Photo: AP

Temari balls in a gift box at Araki’s studio. Temari can sell for hundreds of US dollars a piece. Photo: AP

Araki says finding successors to preserve temari is difficult, as the craft takes years to learn. Photo: AP

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Lifestyle

Fashion & Beauty

Hand-dyed denim and vintage machines are used to make jeans that sell for up to US$1,400 a pair in town where even the roads are denim blue


Hand-dyed denim and vintage machines are used to make jeans that sell for up to US$1,400 a pair in town where even the roads are denim blue.


Sustainability

Green living

Japan