Hand-dyed with natural indigo and made on old looms, Japanese jeans have more and more fans, who are not afraid to invest in these high-end pants. At the small Momotaro Jeans factory in southwest Japan, Yoshiharu Okamoto gently dips cotton threads into a vat of dark blue liquid, which colors his hands and nails as he repeats the process. The cotton is imported from Zimbabwe, but the natural indigo used is harvested in Japan, its color is much richer than that of synthetic imitations, according to Yoshiharu Okamoto. This method, which he describes as “long and expensive”, was commonly used to dye kimonos in the Edo period from the 17th to the 19th century.
Created in 2006 by Japan Blue, Momotaro Jeans is one of dozens of jeans producing companies based in Kojima, a seaside resort renowned for the quality of its craftsmanship, far from mass-produced American jeans. This know-how comes at a cost. Momotaro’s basic jeans retail for around 185 euros (30,000 yen). And the most expensive model, hand-woven on a wooden machine converted from a luxury kimono loom, costs more than 1,200 euros.
Following in the footsteps of high-end Japanese denim brands such as Evisu and Sugar Cane, interest in Japan Blue continues to grow overseas. Exports now represent 40% of retail sales, and the company recently opened its sixth store, in Kyoto, mainly aimed at wealthy tourists. Jeans manufacturing flourished starting in the 1960s in Kojima, which has a long history of cotton farming and textile manufacturing.
Today, Kojima denim, a textile whose name comes from its French origin (“from Nîmes”), is used by international luxury fashion brands. The Japanese jeans market “has increased over the last 10-15 years”, says Michael Pendlebury, a tailor who runs a repair shop in Britain called The Denim Doctor. They are “unaffordable for many” and have a ‘niche’ reputation, says Pendlebury.
“Mass-produced denim brands like Levi’s, Diesel and Wrangler are the biggest and most popular, but the best quality is still Japanese in my opinion.”continues the Briton, who sees in the weakness of the yen and the boom in tourism an additional opportunity for these pants.
The use of old, fragile and noisy shuttle weaving machines, which have only a quarter of the capacity of state-of-the-art factory looms, also contributes to the reputation of Momotaro Jeans, whose name evokes a local folk hero. These shuttle looms made in the 1980s often break down, and the only people who know how to repair them are over 70 years old, according to Shigeru Uchida, an artisan weaver at Momotaro. Despite the complexity of these machines, their fabric is worth it, assures Shigeru Uchida, 78 years old: “The texture is very soft to the touch…and once made into jeans, it lasts quite a long time.”
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