Japan’s national clothing during the Second World War: Material shortages, war mentality and the kokuminfuku

This article explores Japan’s growing war mentality in the period leading up to the Second World War, connecting it with an analysis of how fashion shifted before, during and after the war by focusing on the Japanese men’s national clothing of the kokuminfuku, a simply designed military-like costume that minimized textile waste. Fashion scenes worldwide had quiet years; pleasurable, fun activities were not suitable for wartime, and raw materials used in the production of clothing had to be directed for military purposes, particularly in a resource-poor nation such as Japan. Thus, this is a period of Japanese fashion that has rarely been studied, even by Japanese fashion scholars, in contrast to numerous studies on Taisho modernity, and the cultural developments in the post-war rapid economic boom. By reviewing both official and media publications, my aim is to assess how the government-led promotion of the kokuminfuku affected both the growing war mentality and dress code when material shortages were the major issue. Unlike the nineteenth-century sartorial promotion of wearing a western suit instead of the kimono, the kokuminfuku was short-lived. With the rapid recovery from the war, it soon became relegated to the archives of fashion. Even eight decades since the conclusion of the war, it is still widely held in Japanese museums, assisting our understanding of the brutal war from the perspective of fashion studies.