Applying Storytelling Approach to Analyze Kojima Jeans District Based on Slow Fashion Perspectives

Abstract

This study conducted a case study of Kojima district in Japan, which underwent a rise and fall through the past booms, disruptive innovation, international politics, and changes in government policy. Today, the district has successfully regenerated, and the regeneration is linked to fashion localism. This study aimed to explore how the Kojima district sustained community-based fashion business and analyzed the factors that contributed to its regeneration from the slow fashion viewpoint. This study employed a case study analysis, using the storytelling approach, and established an analytical framework based on keywords derived from slow fashion, namely localism, quality, and value. The results indicate that the strategies of business leadership, improvement in quality, a willingness to address new challenges, success in authenticating strategies, clustering fashion business, path dependency, and maintaining workers and the fashion business community contributed to promoting a series of industrial structural adjustments in Kojima and sustaining the community-based fashion business.

A Meta-Analysis of Sustainable Fashion Studies Since the Rana Plaza Collapse and Its Relation to the SDGs

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Value Propositions for Small Fashion Businesses: From Japanese Case Studies

“…The textile industry is considered a declining industry in Japan, while small and medium sized textile and apparel companies in the Sanbi area survived by adopting a series of industrial structural adjustments sustained the communitybased fashion businesses. [36]. Kazuya Yamaguchi, the founder of the REKROW and the manager of DISCOVERLINK Setouchi, Inc., mentioned that this project aimed not only to create a new value for discarded work clothes, but also a new economic cycle, which contributes to sustain the declining local textile industries [37].…”