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FUKUOKA -- Once upon a time, hanten and dotera jackets were an indispensable tool in warding off the winter cold. Students studying for entrance exams in the Showa era (1926-1989) would sit at their desks until late at night wearing their hanten, until the arrival of fleece and other clothing saw its star wane. Now, there's apparently a quiet revival for the vintage winter clothing taking place.

Since 2016, Tokyo-based fashion and accessories store Beams Co. has been selling dotera-style down jackets, available at its Beams Japan shops and via its online store. Hiroshi Aida, 57, head of apparel maker R&D Works Co. which makes the products, explained: "They have a practicality, and we aimed to update the products for today's styles so that they can be worn outside and also as indoor clothes."

According to a representative at Beams, the products were popular with inbound tourists and other customers before the coronavirus pandemic. They said that even with the loss of demand from foreign visitors during the coronavirus crisis, sales are still good. "Items with a Japanese element to them are of interest to young people in particular, and that's what's driven the trend over the last few years," they said.

Outdoor clothing maker Montbell Co. in the west Japan city of Osaka has sold down hanten jackets since 2004, and down chanchanko sleeveless jackets since 2014. A company representative said they're seeing rising customer numbers from people buying them as indoor clothes as people spend more time at home during the pandemic, and as presents to parents from younger people who send gifts while they refrain from going back to their hometowns. In fiscal 2020, their sales were up around 20% on the 2019 fiscal year.

The trend has also spread to traditional hanten products. Hitomi Yoshigai, 60, is president of Miyata Orimono, which was founded in 1913 and is based in the southwest Japan city of Chikugo, Fukuoka Prefecture. According to her, demand for padded hanten jackets jumped during the oil shocks of the 1970s, when people would buy them to endure the cold while saving money on skyrocketing costs for heating oil.

According to the Kurume padded hanten cooperative in Chikugo, during the 1980s peak there were some 3 million of the garments manufactured annually across the city, making it the greatest producer of the clothes in all of Japan. Miyata Orimono was at the time producing some 530,000 of the jackets a year. But then cheap, stylish goods from abroad emerged on the market. People's living conditions also improved, thereby reducing indoor clothes' role against the cold from drafts in homes, and the company's annual production had fallen to some 20,000 hanten.

But in 2020, the company's internet sales of padded hanten rocketed to twice their amount in fiscal 2019. Miyata Orimono's padded hanten are generally sold for between 10,000 and 30,000 yen (about $87 to $261). Yoshigai said proudly, "We came to aim for creating hanten that our young employees can wear even outside. If you take care of the jackets, you can get 10 years of use from them."

(Japanese original by Azusa Yamazaki, Kyushu News Department)

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