The birthplace of Japanese Denim, Kojima, Okayama

There is a town called Kojima in Okayama, which is dominated by denim companies : head offices, mills, laundries and indigo dyeing houses. If you want to learn about true Japanese denim, this is the place to go.

As well as many other fantastic names that the U.S. and European countries may not yet not know but are well worth attention. The is so dominated by denim that they even have a jeans street, home to many local companies’ stores.

The area of Kojima was used to be dedicated to school uniform manufacturing and the employees believed that they could produce their denim jean by themselves, however there were no fabrics and sewing machines in Japan.

After all, back in 1965, they imported all materials from U.S. and produced first jean in Japan. Then, after 8 years, in 1973, they produced their first “made in Japan “ jean by all materials from Kojima.