“Why Kojima?” Visitors from overseas often ask this in meetings. We have already written about the first Japanese-made jeans of 1965, but before that comes a much longer history of cloth. Salt fields, cotton, tabi socks, school uniforms. Here is the sequence, as far as the sources allow.
Cotton grew on land that used to be sea
According to the City of Kurashiki, the area around Kurashiki was open sea until about 400 years ago. Kojima, as its name (“child island”) suggests, was an island, and land reclamation in the Edo period joined it to the mainland. In 2018 the Kojima Chamber of Commerce marked “400 years since Kojima joined the mainland.”
The best-known figure in this reclamation is Nozaki Buzaemon. The Okayama prefectural tourism site states that between 1827 and 1863 he developed 161 hectares of tidal salt fields around Nozaki-hama, near today’s Kojima Station, together with 652 hectares of reclaimed farmland known as Fukuda Shinden. His house, the Former Nozaki Residence, stands at the entrance to Jeans Street.
Reclaimed land is salty and poorly suited to rice. Salt-tolerant cotton and rush were planted instead. The Japan Heritage story “The Kurashiki Story That Begins with a Single Cotton Flower” opens with exactly this point.
Souvenirs for pilgrims: braided cords and tabi
In the Edo period, Kojima prospered by making sanada-himo braided cords, kokura-ori cloth and tabi socks as souvenirs for pilgrims to Yuga-san. Cotton was grown, woven and sewn here. Work with heavy cotton was already rooted in the town.
In the Meiji era, the chronology of the Okayama Apparel Industry Association records that demand for obi fabric fell after the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, and production shifted to tabi, heavy work cloth and hakama fabric. In 1906 powered sewing machines were introduced for tabi, and mass production began. Between 1916 and 1919, Kojima’s tabi output exceeded ten million pairs a year, the highest in Japan according to the same chronology.
Tabi skills became school uniforms
After the First World War, changing lifestyles cut demand for tabi. The cutting and sewing skills built up on tabi were then applied to school uniforms. The chronology places the first uniform production in the early Taisho era (the 1910s) and records mass production with treadle sewing machines from 1921.
After the Second World War, by the mid-1950s Kojima made about 70 percent of Japan’s school uniforms, a figure given both by the industry chronology and by a local company history (which dates it to 1956). A Japan Heritage feature puts the pre-war share at “over 90 percent,” but without stating how it was calculated, so we treat these as a range rather than a precise figure. The peak came in 1963 with 10.06 million uniforms, the year before the Tokyo Olympics.
The turning point arrived at almost the same time. In the late 1950s, domestically produced polyester (“Tetoron”) spread, and cotton school uniforms stopped selling.
1965: to jeans
The history of Kurashiki Hampu records that, as tabi declined, textile makers turned their sewing skills to school uniforms and work clothes. This was a town where craftspeople and machines that could sew heavy cotton kept looking for the next job.
Then came 1965. Maruo Clothing of Kojima, today’s Big John, completed the jeans it describes in its official history as Japan’s first domestically made pair, under the brand name CANTON. According to a nippon.com article, much of the start-up material was imported from the United States: the denim, rivets, buttons, zippers, sewing thread and the sewing machines themselves. A Japan Heritage feature records that the fabric was too stiff to sew, and that needles were changed and machines adjusted through trial and error before the first pair was completed.
The Okayama prefectural tourism site, however, states that “Japan’s first jeans were born in 1960,” so accounts of the starting year differ. This site follows the company’s official history and the City of Kurashiki in using 1965.
The fabric became Japanese too
Around 1970, spinning and dyeing-and-weaving companies in Okayama and Hiroshima began producing denim in Japan. In their official histories, a Kurashiki spinning company “launched the first denim business by a Japanese company” in 1970, and a weaving company in Fukuyama “became the first in Japan to supply rope-dyed denim” in the same year. Two different “firsts,” defined differently, sit side by side in the same year.
In 1973 Big John released jeans made entirely in Japan, using domestic denim. From Japanese sewing in 1965 to Japanese fabric in 1973 took eight years.
Kojima’s work: sewing and washing
This is the shape of the region today. Fabric production centres on Bitchu and Bingo, including Ibara and Fukuyama. Citing an industry federation, nippon.com reports that the Sanbi district (Bizen, Bitchu and Bingo) produced 26.05 million square metres of denim in 2024, almost 100 percent of Japan’s output.
Kojima’s strengths are the sewing of heavy cotton and wash finishing. Several sources record that washing began in Kojima in the 1970s, and that stone washing and chemical washing were developed here in the 1980s. “Sewing,” carried over from the tabi era, and “washing,” born in the jeans era: both sit within a few kilometres of each other in Kojima.
From a shuttered street to Jeans Street
In 2009, three jeans shops opened in vacant premises on the Ajino shopping street. The City of Kurashiki describes it as a street that was “becoming a shuttered street” at the time. Local jeans makers and fabric makers, the chamber of commerce and the city drew up the “Kojima Jeans Street plan,” and by 2020 it had grown into a 400-metre street of about 40 shops with roughly 200,000 visitors a year. In 2015, Kojima Station received the nickname “JEANS STATION Kojima.”
On 28 April 2017, the Agency for Cultural Affairs designated “The Kurashiki Story That Begins with a Single Cotton Flower: A Textile Town Woven from East and West” as Japan Heritage. The Former Nozaki Residence is among its component cultural properties. The salt merchant’s house and the jeans street stand within the same 400 metres. Kojima’s history fits within walking distance.
A map of the town is at Kojima Jeans Days, and the wider story of indigo at The World Was Indigo. We hope they are useful when you visit.
Sources (checked 20 October 2026, all in Japanese unless noted)
Years and figures follow the sources below. The school-uniform shares and the phrase “highest in Japan” come from an industry chronology, a company history and tourism materials, not from government statistics.
- City of Kurashiki, Kojima branch office page (tabi and school uniforms, sea until 400 years ago) https://www.city.kurashiki.okayama.jp/33451.htm
- City of Kurashiki, Kurashiki Bunka feature “Kojima, the sacred place of jeans” (April 2020; 1965, Jeans Street from three shops in 2009, about 40 shops and 200,000 visitors, JEANS STATION) https://citysales.city.kurashiki.okayama.jp/special/vol32_01/
- City of Kurashiki, Japan Heritage “Kurashiki Story” (souvenirs for Yuga pilgrims, top textile shipment value among municipalities) https://citysales.city.kurashiki.okayama.jp/chishiki/2244/
- Okayama Prefecture tourism site, Former Nozaki Residence (161 ha of salt fields, 652 ha of Fukuda Shinden) https://www.okayama-kanko.jp/okatabi/846/page
- Okayama Prefecture tourism site, “Made in Okayama” (the 1960 account; clusters in Kojima and Ibara) https://www.okayama-kanko.jp/feature/made_in_okayama/38
- Japan Heritage portal, Story #049 (cotton and rush on reclaimed land; component properties) https://japan-heritage.bunka.go.jp/ja/stories/story049/
- Japan Heritage portal, feature article (90 percent of uniforms; the first-jeans anecdote) https://japan-heritage.bunka.go.jp/ja/special/145/
- Okayama Prefecture, Japan Heritage designation notice (28 April 2017) https://www.pref.okayama.jp/site/160/540722.html
- Okayama Apparel Industry Association, “History” (chronology of tabi, uniforms and workwear) https://okayama-ap.or.jp/history/index.html / https://okayama-ap.or.jp/history/index2.html
- Kurashiki Hampu, “Story” (powered sewing machines; about 70 percent; 10.06 million uniforms) https://www.kurashikihampu.co.jp/story3
- Kojima Chamber of Commerce, “Kojima Jeans Street” and “400 years joined to the mainland” https://www.kojima-cci.or.jp/about/area/jeans.html / https://www.kojima-cci.or.jp/sightseeing/look/jeansvillage.html
- Big John official “History” (CANTON in 1965; all-Japanese jeans in 1973) https://www.bigjohn.co.jp/
- Kurabo “DNA” (English; denim business from 1970) http://www.kurabo.co.jp/english/dna/01/ / Kaihara “History” (rope-dyed denim from 1970) https://www.kaihara-denim.com/company/history/
- nippon.com, “60 years since the birth of Japanese jeans in Kojima” (2025; imported materials; 26.05 million m² in the Sanbi district) https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/g02518/ and “Kojima, the sacred place of jeans” (2012; when washing began) https://www.nippon.com/ja/views/b00602/
Cover photo: Kojima Jeans Street, August 2021. Photo by Asturio Cantabrio, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.