Figure 1.--The short pants worn by elementary age Japanese boys were usually quite short, both play shots and dress shorts. This did not begin to change until the mid-1990s.

Japanese boys clothes: post-war years (1945-90) -- garments

Headwear

Children's headwear was very limited before the war. Boys mostly wore stanfard issue military caps. I'm not sure what gurls wore. After the war quite a range of different styles appeared, especially for younger children. Baseball caps became very common for older boys.

Shirts

Sweaters

Long pants

Almost all boys began wearing long pants after they finish primary school. This is true for both school, dress, and casual wear. Jeans do not begin to become popular until the 1970s, much later than in Europe. Only in the late 70s do som older boys boys begin wearing short pants for casual wear rather than long pants.

Short Pants

From the immediate post-war years through the late 1980s, Japanese primary schoolage boys were set off from men and older boys by one overwhelmingly obvious fashion characteristic: they wore short pants. In this, Japan matched and even surpassed European countries where the fashion originated. Shorts for men and older boys were strictly athletic wear, but the great majority of younger Japanese boys wore short pants in winter and summer, for play and for school, and for every conceivable cermonial occasion. And while longer baggy styles prevailed in the 1940s and the 1950s, by the early sixties, hemlines began to climb; by the early 1980s, short pants were as short as they could possibly be, leaving not just the knees but pretty much the entire thigh bare. The one concession to cold weather was knee socks. Exceptions to the ubiquity of shorts were the colder parts of northern Japan where the wearing of shorts would actually have invited frost bite, and in some rural areas. (See school uniform discussion below.) As a long archipelago in roughly the same latitudes as the east coast of the United States, Japan has comparable weather patterns. Thus northern Japan has cold winters similar to those of New England; Tokyo's climate is much like Washington's--winters perhaps a bit milder with typical January weather ranging from around freezing at night to 9-10�C-- upper 40s--at mid-day; Osaka/Kobe more like Atlanta.)

Smocks

we do not note Japanese chidlren wearing smocks, except for very young children in nursery school.

Hosiery

One children's fashion common in Japan is for younger boys to wear tights or long over-the-knee stockings with short pants during the winter. It is common in America and westetn Europe for girls to wear tights, but not boys. Boys wearing long stockings or tights was a style in Germany, Russia, and other easten European countries, but now has become rather unusual. Some little Gernan boys still wear tights during the winter, although now with long trousers. It appears to be continuing in Japan for boys up to about about 7 or 8.

Shoes

Japanese boys wore tennis shoes much more commonly than European boys or even American boys. Often Japanese boys wear tennis shoes with dressy outfits or even with their school uniforms. Until the 1970s, Amerucan boys usually wore tennis shoes for play after school. Tennis shoes in Europe were genrally worn for gym and boys were more likely to wear sandals, often closed-toe sandals for play. Japnese boys, however, commonly wore their tennis shoes, usually white, for a wide variety of occasions. I think initially this was largely a question of cost. Leather shoes are also worn by Japnese boys, but usually only for dressy occasions.

Knit clothes

Knit clothes for younger Japanese children appears to have been popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Knit clothing was popular for children in other countries. Knit clothing was commonly featured in Japanese fashion magazines and many knit outfits were pictured in sewing magazines. Japanese mothers were less likely to work outside the home than American mothers. As a result, they had more time for knitting and other domestic activities.

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Created: August 29, 2003
Last updated: August 29, 2003