Cropped Heads corduroy souvenir jacket with skull, serpent and chrysanthemum embroidery

What Is Amekaji? The Japanese Discipline of American Casual

Amekaji is a contraction of American casual, and in Japan it names a whole way of dressing: the leather flight jacket over a chambray shirt, the raw jeans turned up to show the selvedge, the engineer boots, the sweatshirt with the right loopwheel texture. The clothes are American in origin. The discipline that chose them, reproduced them and wears them with such care is Japanese, and it is the subject of this guide.

Where it came from

Three waves made amekaji. The first came with the occupation after 1945, when American surplus, flight jackets and the first souvenir jackets reached the port towns; the sukajan was born here. The second was the Ivy boom of the 1960s, when VAN Jacket and the magazine Men's Club taught Japanese students to dress like Princeton undergraduates, a story told in Ametora. The third was the vintage boom of the 1980s and 1990s, when Harajuku shops filled with old Levi's, Red Wing boots and A-2 jackets, and when brands such as Buzz Rickson's, The Real McCoy's, Sugar Cane and Warehouse began reproducing them to a standard the original manufacturers had never reached.

What unites the three is attitude. The Japanese reading of American clothing treated it as a tradition with rules, to be learned and kept, at a moment when America itself was discarding it. That is why a Japanese reproduction of a 1943 flight jacket is made to a wartime specification, with the right contract number on the label, and why a Japanese collector can tell a 1947 Levi's from a 1955 one across a room.

The core wardrobe

  • Flight and military jackets. The A-2, G-1 and B-3 of the Second World War, the MA-1 and N-3B of the jet age, and the Vietnam-era field jackets. The reproductions and the originals are both collected; see Japanese heritage flight jackets and the flight jacket room.
  • Denim. Vintage Levi's and Lee, and the Osaka reproductions that followed. Our denim guide and The Osaka Five cover it.
  • Workwear. Chore coats, overalls, chambray and hickory stripe, from original Carhartt and Big Mac to Japanese makers such as Toyo Enterprise's Sugar Cane.
  • Souvenir and stadium jackets. The sukajan and the sutajan, the embroidered satin jacket and the varsity, both now made in Japan to a higher standard than their American models.
  • Ivy and trad. Button-down oxfords, loafers, madras and the navy blazer, the gentler end of the same tradition.
  • Boots and sneakers. Engineer boots, Red Wing and the Japan-only sneaker releases that keep the look current; see Japan-only sneakers.

The wagara turn

In Japan the American wardrobe did not stay American. Embroidered tigers and dragons moved from the souvenir jacket onto denim, and Japanese patterns, wagara, found their way onto trucker jackets and work shirts. Brands such as Tedman, Tailor Toyo, Evisu and the embroidered denim houses made this a genre of its own, and it is why our Amekaji archive shares its name with wagara. The bosozoku and yanki styles explained in Bosozoku and Yanki Style are the loud end of the same spectrum.

Buying amekaji from Japan

  • Sizing. Japanese reproductions are cut to the original patterns and labelled in Japanese sizes, which run small; a Japanese 40 is roughly a Western 38. Always compare flat measurements, which our sizing guide explains.
  • Reading the label. Reproduction brands print contract numbers, mill names and lot numbers that identify the exact model and year of issue. Learn the brand's own system before judging a piece.
  • Condition. Leather should be supple with no dry cracking at the sleeve creases; satin should be unfaded on the shoulders; denim fades should be earned. The Japanese grade will say which; see Japanese condition ranks.
  • Weight and shipping. A B-3 shearling or a lined N-3B is heavy; delivery is quoted by weight, and import duties are the buyer's; see Import duties from Japan.

Why Japan

Because the archive is here. The originals were bought by Japanese collectors decades ago and kept in dry wardrobes; the reproductions are made here and their early runs and shop-only editions never left. A buyer in London or Los Angeles looking for a 1950s Lee 91-J or a first-run Buzz Rickson's A-2 is, in practice, looking in Japan.

In the archive now

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Index terms: amekaji · what is amekaji · american casual japan · amekaji style · amekaji brands · japanese reproduction flight jacket · buzz rickson real mccoys sugar cane · ametora · japanese workwear brands · vintage americana japan

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