The Birth of Sukajan: How Dobuita Street Forged Yokosuka’s Most Enduring Cultural Icon

The sukajan is often described as a Japanese jacket, and sometimes as an American one. It is both, and the place where the two met was a short street outside a naval base. This article tells the jacket's story as a timeline, year by year and decade by decade, so that each change can be seen in its context: the war, the Occupation, the fleets, the fashion magazines, the factories and the museums. A second section then follows a single jacket from drawing to finished garment.

A timeline of the souvenir jacket

1945: arrival

Allied occupation forces arrive in Japan in late summer. American servicemen are stationed in cities and ports across the country, including the former Imperial Navy base at Yokosuka, which becomes a United States Navy base. In the textile town of Kiryu in Gunma, largely spared by the air raids, occupation troops arrive in mid-September. The town's skilled weavers and embroiderers will soon have new customers.

Late 1940s: the first jackets

Japanese makers begin producing souvenirs for the new arrivals. Among them is the textile trading company Kōshō & Co., whose staff design embroidered jackets for American servicemen, first sold from street stalls in Tokyo's Ginza. Because silk is scarce, the jackets are made in rayon and later acetate, and the embroidery is put out to workshops in Kiryu and Ashikaga. The invoices call the product a "souvenir jacket", the name it still carries in English. Shops on Dobuita Street, outside the Yokosuka base, begin selling and making similar jackets for sailors.

1950 to 1953: the Korean War

The war in Korea brings huge numbers of American personnel through Japan. Demand for souvenirs soars, and the embroidered jacket becomes a standard purchase for servicemen heading home. Through the decade, Kōshō supplies the great majority of the jackets sold through the base exchanges.

1950s: Souvenir Street

Dobuita is at its busiest. A sign reading "Souvenir Street" hangs across the road. Long-established shops such as Prince Shokai, founded in 1947, and MIKASA, founded in the early 1950s, develop their own repertoires of dragons, tigers, eagles and maps, and take custom orders for names, ships and units. The jacket's visual language is fixed in this decade.

1960s: from souvenir to style

Japanese young people begin wearing the jacket themselves. Its American shape and bold imagery make it a badge of rebellious cool, and its association with the base towns gives it an edge. Shōhei Imamura's 1961 film Pigs and Battleships, set on Dobuita, catches the mood. In 1965 Kōshō's business is continued by a new company, Toyo Enterprise, founded by Susumu Kobayashi.

1960s and early 1970s: the Vietnam War

The fleet based at Yokosuka is again busy, and souvenir jackets record tours, carriers and cruises across the Pacific. Many of the most collectable vintage jackets, embroidered with ship names and maps, date from these years.

1970s: machines and quiet streets

Computer-controlled embroidery machines spread through Kiryu and other textile towns, replacing much hand-guided work. After the mid-1970s fewer servicemen pass through Yokosuka and the souvenir trade shrinks. Dobuita's shops turn increasingly to Japanese customers, for whom the jacket is now fashion.

1980s and 1990s: the return of the originals

Japanese vintage dealers begin buying old American clothing in bulk, and among it are souvenir jackets that left Japan decades earlier. Collectors and magazines study them closely. Japanese makers, led by Toyo Enterprise and its Tailor Toyo label, start producing careful reproductions based on surviving originals, and the sukajan becomes a pillar of Japan's American casual style.

2010s: the world catches up

Major fashion houses show embroidered souvenir jackets on international runways in the middle of the decade, and the sukajan spreads through global streetwear. In 2018 Dobuita Street formally declares itself the birthplace of the sukajan.

2020s: recognition

Official sukajan are produced for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, held in 2021. In late 2022 the Yokosuka Museum of Art opens PRIDE OF YOKOSUKA, the first major museum exhibition devoted to the jacket, showing around 140 vintage pieces. In April 2026 TSI Holdings announced an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Toyo Enterprise, a sign of how much value the market now places on heritage Japanese clothing.

Why Dobuita, and not anywhere else

Souvenir jackets were sold near bases all over Japan, and the embroidery was largely done in Gunma and Tochigi. So why does Yokosuka own the name? Three reasons stand out. The Yokosuka base was one of the largest and longest-lived American installations in Japan, so its souvenir trade lasted for decades. Dobuita concentrated that trade in one walkable street, where shops competed and refined their designs side by side. And the street never lost the jacket: when the sailors thinned, the shops kept making it for Japanese customers, carrying the craft across the gap until the world came looking for it again. Our visitor's guide to Dobuita Street shows what remains today.

Myths worth retiring

• "They were made from parachute silk." A lovely story, and possibly a sales line in its day, but there is no evidence that it was common practice. Rayon and acetate were the working fabrics.
• "Every sukajan was hand-embroidered." The classic method was hand-guided machine embroidery: skilled, but done on a machine. Since the 1970s most jackets have used computer embroidery.
• "Sukajan were a gangster jacket." The jacket did acquire a rebellious image in Japan, but it began as a cheerful souvenir and has always been worn by every kind of person.

For the meaning of the motifs, see How to Read a Sukajan; for the embroiderers, Kiryu and Sukajan; and for pieces from each era, the sukajan collection.

How a classic sukajan is made

1. Design: the motif is drawn to the size of the back panel, chest and sleeves, with colours chosen for each area of thread.
2. Embroidery: on the traditional yokoburi machine, an embroiderer guides the fabric by hand under a needle that swings from side to side, building shading stitch by stitch. No two hand-guided pieces are exactly alike.
3. Cutting and quilting: body panels are cut from satin or velveteen and often quilted to a light padding for warmth and structure.
4. Assembly: panels are sewn, the lining or reverse face is joined, and the jacket is finished with a zip.
5. Ribbing: knitted ribs at the collar, cuffs and hem, often striped, complete the silhouette.

Our essay Kiryu and Sukajan visits the embroidery town where much of this craft developed.

Questions readers ask

How can I tell hand-guided stitching from computer embroidery?

Hand-guided yokoburi embroidery shows long, flowing stitches with subtle variation and painterly shading. Computer embroidery tends to be denser, more uniform and built from shorter, regular stitches.

Why is the jacket quilted?

Quilting to a light padding gives the satin body warmth, weight and a smooth drape, and supports the heavy embroidery.

The sukajan reading path

This article is one of a series on the souvenir jacket. Each takes a different angle; together they form the most complete account we know of.

• What Is a Sukajan?: the starting point: materials, motifs and how to choose one.
• History and Origins of the Sukajan: from postwar Yokosuka to global icon.
• Dobuita Street, Birthplace of the Sukajan: visiting the street where it began.
• Kiryu and Sukajan: the embroidery town behind the jacket.
• How to Read a Sukajan: what the dragons, tigers and maps mean.
• The sukajan collection: vintage, modern and collector pieces, each examined in Japan.
• Nostalgia in Satin: the sukajan as museum heritage.
• 12 Essential Sukajan Brands: the makers and how to wear them.

Sukajan glossary

• スカジャン (sukajan): short for "Yokosuka jumper", the embroidered souvenir jacket.
• 横振り刺繍 (yokoburi shishū): hand-guided machine embroidery with a side-to-side needle, used for classic sukajan.
• ベッチン (becchin): velveteen, the plush cotton pile used on many reversible jackets.
• アセテート / レーヨン (acetate / rayon): the lustrous satin-like fabrics of the classic jacket body.
• リバーシブル (reversible): a jacket with two finished faces, often satin on one side and velveteen on the other.
• ドブ板通り (Dobuita-dōri): the Yokosuka street near the naval base where the jacket's story began.