Popular Culture Review Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2014 | Page 43

The Case o f the Dying Kimono: Kimono Revival and Fusion in the United States Popular wisdom and recent academic research suggest that the Japanese kimono has experienced a decline in popularity since the 1920s, which has accelerated since the end of World War II. However, some recent events would suggest that there may be a modest kimono revival occurring in Japan, which coincides with an increased interest in traditional Japanese clothing in the United States, Australia and Western Europe. This paper proposes to investigate this phenomenon in the United States.' In 1963, Keichiro Nakagawa and Henry Rosovsky published an article in The Business History Review investigating the development of the Japanese woolen industry and the gradual Westernization of Japanese clothing. Near the end of the article the authors posed the following question: And what has happened to the kimono? It is dying as a form of every day dress, worn by the mass of the population, but it is reemerging as a form of ceremonial formal dress. Today at all major occasions—weddings