Chapter 1
Speaking of "OKAYAMA" is "JEANS"
The main things of "JAPANESE JEANS" industrial development history is a splits of artisan in OKAYAMA, and it has been developing from local industry which date back to Edo period, to now.
Adoration to America
During 1960's Japan became the high growth period and also "TOKYO OLYMPIC Game" came. At the same time, adoration to Jeans was raised up by young generation who was able to afford their life by themselves. They wanted to wear jeans for cool way like their screen hero as Jimmy Dean or Keiich Akagi. They were rushing to grabed money and went to second hand shop to buy a Jeans. At that time, Japanese industry wanted to produce domestic Jeans to see the increasing markets grow. However,the status quoof Japanese Jeans production seans were as far from genuine Jeans.
INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATION
The word of denim is almost equal with the woed of jeans. The capital of denim industry was USA for a long time. The Jeans maker which rise in a stream until 1975 in Japan (specially KOJIMA area and IBARA area in OKAYAMA), just crazy about to purchasing a denim fabrics from the USA. At that same time, local weaver realized that Okayama had been the capital of cotton weaves since Edo Period in Japan.
TRADITION IS A ORIGIN
In 1967, dyeing factory in Okayama succsseded in providing continuous dyeing to improving industrial production based on their traditional natural indigo dyeing technique. In 1970, dyeing factory in HIROSHIMA analyzed construction of American high quality denim and developed the first domestic rope dyeing machine which improved process of rope dyeing system at that time. Their founder's spirits had been bringing the traditional technique such as color and texture into the modern jeans world. Since 1980, the process of ring-spin yarn with rope-dyed which had been omitted by rational minds of the world, still continue in Japanese denim industry by the obsessive Japanese minds. Now, people come back to "Genuine Denim",and the obsessive spirits of Japanese is one of the factor to get high evaluation from the world.
ACCELATION OF DOMESTIC DENIM DEVELOPMENT
Soon, domestic major cotton mills intensified to against the denim material to be along with this movement. Major spinning mill in KURASHIKI expanded spinning facilities for thick yarn count, and they build the first model of domestic heavy ounce denim, and then garment manufacture in KOJIMA made the first model of genuine domestic jeans in 1973. After that, a needs of domesticjeans has been increasing and the production fields of jeans has been formed around west-side Japan, especially at "BIT-TYU" and "BINNGO"erea, by the better infrastructure of textile industry.