Narrow Cotton Stripes and their Substitutes: Fashion, Technical Progress and Manufacturing Organization in Japanese Popular Clothing, 1850–1920

It is still widely assumed that the emergence of fashion was a uniquely European phenomenon and that, conversely, non-Western clothing sys tems must have remained static and "traditional." Hence, in the case of Japan, clothing modernity continues to be equated with the adoption of Western-style dress. This article presents evidence that, through the pe riod of Japanese economic growth and industrialization from the eight eenth century to World War II, the kimono outfits that most women continued to wear were subject to a process of change that can only be understood as fashion. As a result, by the interwar period, kimono 332 P e n e lo p e F rancks fashion had become a mass-market force that continued to influence the production and consumption of dress, even as, in the postwar period, most women switched to Western-style clothing. Fashion is thus not necessarily a European invention and can represent a significant eco nomic force, even if it comes in distinctively non-European forms.KEYWORDS: Japanese fashion history, economic history of fashion, kimono, Japanese textile industry, cotton and fashion, silk and fashion

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Narrow Cotton Stripes and their Substitutes: Fashion, Technical Progress and Manufacturing Organization in Japanese Popular Clothing, 1850–1920

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Promotion of the Weaving Districts in Modern Japan

Promotion of the Weaving Districts in Modern Japan

Kimono Fashion: The Consumer and the Growth of the Textile Industry in Pre-War Japan

Was Fashion a European Invention?: The Kimono and Economic Development in Japan

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