How All-American Denim Became One of Japan’s Most Coveted Exports

Denim, to many, is as American as apple pie. It’s the cloth of cowboys straddling rippling, muscled mustangs galloping across the western plains, a sartorial signifier of hardscrabble laborers chasing big dreams in our country’s heartland. James Dean wore it (paired in true heartthrob fashion with white cotton and well-worn leather), as have a litany of other culture-shaping Americans, from Bing Crosby flaunting a Canadian tuxedo to Marilyn Monroe coquettishly posing in her curve-hugging, high-waisted blues.

But as for the very best denim? As it happens, the most coveted — and hard to come by — variety comes from an entirely different side of the planet: Japan.

“Japanese selvedge denim is the best denim in the world,” proclaims Paul O’Neill, the design director for Levi Strauss & Co.’s Vintage Clothing and premium Blue Tab collections. In his extensive work recreating some of the brand’s most beloved archival pieces, he’s spent plenty of time abroad sourcing and developing versions of the textile in Japanese mills. And while he’s hesitant to call his strong statement a flat-out fact, he notes that from his personal perspective, it holds true. Japanese denim, he explains, is made with different-sized threads to create a perfectly imperfect slubbed texture, and incorporates time-honored rope-dyeing techniques. It’s made from the highest quality cotton with a gorgeously dense weave and a self-finished edge (selvedge).

“You see Japanese denim ... and you start noticing all these little things you wouldn’t normally think about,” says Charlie Zhang, the senior marketing manager for EVISU. Although the brand is currently known for its forward-thinking approach to crafting jean pieces — think statement silhouettes, intricate embellishment, and blasted out, downtown-cool washes — it’s also one of the original “Osaka 5,” an elite cadre of pioneering Japanese denim labels founded in the late 20th century. “[You see the] texture, weight, stitching, and how the indigo changes after you wear it,” he continues. “A good pair [of Japanese denim jeans] gets more personal the more you abuse it basically. The fabric starts telling the story of whoever owns it.”

Good Jeans Go Global

All these thoughtful components, however, are somewhat ironically inspired by denim as it was originally produced in the United States. As Mohsin Sajid, a UK-based denim designer and denim historian, tells it, the first jeans were a product of Jewish immigrants Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, who used an early version of the fabric to make work pants for miners and railroad workers. But demand for the look began expanding after World War II. “The American idea of freedom was exported all around the world, and all your American sailors, GIs, the Navy guys were wearing denim,” he explains. The cloth became a signifier of youthful defiance, a calling card of cool — and the rest of the world began to take notice. Especially Japan.

“Our Japanese friends were buying denim jeans secondhand,” says Sajid, noting that they would also purchase raw material stateside, usually from the famous (and now shuttered) Cone Mills in North Carolina, the longtime supplier of Levi Strauss & Co. It was around the 1960s that the country began developing its own versions of the material. But, he continues, that wasn’t enough to keep up with demand for the real deal — especially since the industry had adopted a new, cheaper and faster way to spin yarn in the ’70s and ’80s, called open-end, which results in an inferior quality to the original version of the fabric. The Japanese, says Sajid, did not like this one bit.

So they came up with a solution: “They went back to Japan and converted their kimono looms,” says Sajid. He says that the most famous version of these devices came from Toyoda (profits from the loom company later funded the carmaker Toyota). After eight test runs on their fresh-made technology, they produced a version of denim they were happy with — and it only got better from there. By the mid-1990s, the cult-favorite “Osaka Five” brands began exporting rigid, richly pigmented denim that blew the minds of jean freaks around the globe.

“Meanwhile all of America and Europe were in a dark age of denim, wearing really baggy fits. We’re talking the early ’90s: really baggy, ill-fitting pants and terrible-quality fabric,” says Sajid. By the early 2000s, Japan had secured its status as the place to procure premium denim.

High Caliber At A Cost

Superior quality and a pristine reputation, naturally, come with a price tag to match. Do a quick online search of jean silhouettes made of Japanese denim, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything under $300; many styles can run upwards of $400 to $500. A big part of this markup? The vast expense of working with mills and factories that are financially invested in making the very best possible product at any cost. This is something Viktor Fredbäck — a Swedish vintage denim collector, author of the book True Fit, and subject of the documentary Denim Hunter — witnessed firsthand when collaborating with a Japanese denim brand to recreate key pieces from his vast collection of archival silhouettes.

“After about six months, they sent me a sample of the fabric they made from my original, and it was good — like 95 percent there, but not 100 percent,” he recalls. So he sent it back with notes. The second attempt was even better: maybe 97 percent there in his estimation. But when he returned to the label, they asked if it was possible to let that tiny discrepancy slide, as each rejected batch had taken roughly $50,000 to develop. “It’s so expensive to make the fabric in a special way,” says Fredbäck. “And most of the Japanese brands are built on originals: They make a jacket, but somewhere out there is an original from 1890, and they make it with exactly all the details, the trimmings, everything. That costs a lot of money.”

Another reason for the mark-up? Authentic Japanese denim brands are sourcing material made with from technology from over half a decade ago. “Production efficiency [on these machines] is way lower than the advanced [ones] and, of course, there are no more maintenance parts or official repair available,” says Ryo Nakakoji, the content manager and sales representative for TCB jeans, a contemporary Kurashiki-based label specializing in vintage reproductions. According to him, only two companies in the words still make denim from one hundred percent cotton threads — which lasts far longer and ages more elegantly than blended weaves — and they are both in Japan.

“We study fabric at the microscopic level, checking the length of fiber, the color of the indigo, the density of weaving, and we use our exclusive fabric for each style we make,” says Nakakoji. He explains that this adds an extra IYKYK level of exclusivity to the TCB product that the casual jeans shopper may not be able to distinguish: Whereas many companies claiming “Made in Japan” may be utilizing ready-made fabrics from established mills, TCB works closely with these highly skilled factories to developed something one-of-a-kind for each unique run.

“I often see that many brands use [terms like] ‘Japan-Made,’ ‘Japanese Fabric,’ and ‘Japanese Craftsmanship’ like it’s a five-star label,” Nakakoji observes. He says that just because something is made in Japan doesn’t guarantee top tier quality. It’s more important, he explains, to educate yourself on the raw materials and production methods that go into the making of a garment. “‘Made in Japan’ items are a dime a dozen: The mill that produced the fabric [they’re made with] and the factories that produced them matter more.”

Short Supply, Rising Demand

Meanwhile, there’s a growing labor shortage driving up the price of production as well. “[Japan] is going through a period right now where the younger generation doesn’t want to work in factories — the people you meet making denim are much older,” says Sajid. This nationwide labor shortage, he continues, means that brands, particularly small independent ones such as his own, must join a waitlist of two years minimum for raw material. “It’s being called ‘selvedge shock.’” The situation as a whole has been tough on premium jean companies from a manufacturing standpoint, but good for the already powerful mythos surrounding Japanese denim. “It’s even more romanticized because it’s harder to get,” Sajid says. He adds that, in his opinion, countries like Pakistan and Turkey have developed comparable alternatives in recent years — the former among the world’s largest denim exporters — but lack the mystique of indigo-dyed cotton from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Limited supply means companies would be wise to cherry-pick only the most relevant projects in which to incorporate Japanese denim. The best use case scenarios, in Fredbäck’s opinion, are detail-oriented vintage copies. “If you're not doing a reproduction, then I don't actually see why you'd use Japanese denim — I don’t see the point is if you're doing something very modern and fashionable,” he says. He adds that the old machines used for manufacturing are the best way to reproduce the slubby imperfections of very old textiles, and that these are subtle elements that’ll be lost on most anyone who’s not denim-obsessed. “It's kind of a lame explanation but you don't need a Michelin chef for four-year-old kids,” he says.

For Zhang, however, the intersection of old school textiles and edgy modern design is where true magic happens. “For us [at EVISU], the interesting bit is taking this really traditional, almost obsessive approach to fabric and then doing something quite unexpected with it,” he says. He points out the the line currently encompasses every silhouette from super slim to exaggeratedly wide, complete with embroidery, graphics, and unique treatments — a refreshing show of what humble denim can do with the right blend of raw material, creative spirit, and ingenuity.

The one slight downside? “That the fabric sometimes dictates what you can and can’t do,” says Zhang. He explains that Japanese denim is often super heavy, tough to manipulate, and full of purposeful irregularities. “But honestly,” he continues, “those restrictions can also make the design better.”

The Power of Mystique

All this breathless hype around Japanese denim leaves one wondering if those making it feel the same level of fascination. Perhaps some of the international ardor is akin to finding a really incredible face cream or spice mix abroad that’s hard or impossible to source back home: the sheer novelty of owning something that you can’t order with a few clicks on Amazon.

“I would say Japanese denim means something slightly different depending where you are [in the world,]” says Zhang. He echos Nakakoji’s earlier sentiment that, internationally, “Made in Japan” and Japanese selvedge are often enough to denote any particular item as special. “But in Japan, there’s already much more familiarity with that whole culture, so you’re not necessarily selling somebody purely on the romance of Japanese denim,” he says. So in the case of, say, EVISU, it helps that the company hold historical clout and a pristine reputation as well. “We came from Osaka denim culture, but the brand has always travelled way beyond just denim purists.”

In O’Neill’s experience, denim obsessives in Japan definitely appreciate what they have homegrown — although the product doesn’t hold quite the same enigma as something that comes from abroad. Right now, for instance, he’s working on a premium men’s collection that’ll sell in Japan made exclusively from Japanese denim. However, he also frequently collaborates with BerBerJin, a Tokyo-based store renown for its rare vintage jeans and spot-on reproductions, on recreations of iconic archival designs — and they rarely start the conversation with talk of domestically-made blues.

“The first thing they’ll ask me [when we start a project] is: ‘Is it possible to use the White Oak fabric from North Carolina?’” O’Neill says, referring to his rapidly dwindling stash of original material bought from Cone Mills before it closed in 2017. “So even though there may be Japanese denim that looks just as good, or arguably even better than the North Carolina fabric, it still doesn’t have the history,” he says. “They want the history — and they still want it to be American.”