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