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From $10,000 Jeans to Knitwear: Samurai Cotton Project Has Radically Redefined “Made in Japan”
What does it mean to be “Made in Japan”? In 2008, Samurai founder Toru Nogami posed this question to a group of industry insiders who’d gathered for an informal evening of food and drink.
The consensus was that, to be called “Japanese”, a brand’s fabrics had to be milled, cut, and sewn in Japan. Nogami-san wasn’t satisfied with this. He wanted to do more than produce his clothes in Japan.
He announced to the table that he would do what no other Japanese denim brand had done before. He would make Japanese jeans from Japanese cotton—the first-ever pair of truly end-to-end Japanese jeans.
It may have been the sake talking.
In 2008, there wasn’t a shred of Japanese cotton in Japanese-made denim. The country had only a small handful of cotton growers—mostly extremely small operations that produced just enough cotton for a few small handicrafts.
Those few Japanese manufacturers that did grow their own cotton locally were growing what Nogami-san calls “Western cotton”. Nobody was growing Japanese cotton in any significant amounts.
Western Cotton vs. Japanese Cotton
The “Western cotton” that Nogami-san refers to has long and thin staples—ideal for spinning smooth, durable yarns. It also has about twice the yield per plant, making it a better investment for farmers.
Japanese cotton is indigenous to the islands and has short and chubby staples. It’s more difficult to work with, both as a plant and as a fibre. If you can grow enough to spin it into yarns, looms and knitting machines may break when forced to contend with the slubby and breakage-prone yarns. It is therefore almost entirely spun and woven by hand.
Why Don’t the Japanese Use Japanese Cotton?
Japanese brands don’t use Japanese cotton due to the characteristics of their native cotton, but also because, for all intents and purposes, Japan is not a cotton-producing nation. They haven’t been one for a very long time.
Centuries ago, Japan had a flourishing domestic cotton-growing industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japanese cotton growers (concentrated in the West of Japan) fed high-quality, short-staple cotton into the Japanese textile industry.
Prized for its elasticity, moisture absorption and heat retention, Japanese cotton, when combined with indigo, was the blank canvas for some of history’s most beautiful indigo-dyed garments. But it didn’t attract any interest from outsiders.
After centuries of near-total isolation, Japan quite suddenly started trading with foreign countries in the mid-1800s. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry sailed a fleet of American ships into the port of Uraga, close to modern-day Yokohama.
Foreign cotton poured into the islands. Once protected and self-enclosed, the Japanese cotton industry began to face steep competition, particularly from cotton growers in the American South.
This began a steady period of decline for Japan’s domestic cotton industry. By the middle of the twentieth century, it had dwindled away to next to nothing.
Here’s what I mean by that: The unit of measurement for a nation’s yearly cotton output is a little less than 500,000 pounds. According to the FDA, since at least 1960, Japan hasn’t managed to produce even one of these units. For comparison, the Chinese regularly produce more than 30,000 units per year (around 15 trillion tons of cotton).
Breaking Ground: The $10,000 Jeans
It quickly became clear that, if Nogami-san wanted to use Japanese cotton, he would have to grow it himself.
Most denim principals would have just dismissed the idea at that point, but Nogami-san had the bit between his teeth. He knew that, if he could pull this off, it would be a groundbreaking feat.
Starting with a small plot of land outside of Okayama and a handful of Japanese cotton seeds, Nogami-san turned cotton farmer overnight. That first growing season, it was more error than trial, yielding nothing more than hard lessons.
Three years later, the Samurai team had virtually nothing to show for their efforts. In search of greener pastures, they uprooted the operation, moving their surviving plants nearly 200 kilometres away to some abandoned fields in Sasayama.
Samurai’s cotton plants found purchase in the new fields. Finally, they were producing enough cotton for the brand to work with. The mills resisted, though. They wanted to mix Samurai’s cotton with imported strains—a deal-breaker for Nogami-san at that time.
When they finally located a mill willing to work with the 100% Japanese cotton, Samurai sent them slubby yarns that had been hand-dyed with natural indigo. These yarns were then woven into denim on the Shinya Mills’ vintage shuttle looms.
Samurai artisans then stitched the resulting denim together to create what is still the most expensive pair of jeans ever produced in Japan.
With a $10,000 price tag, there weren’t many takers. In fact, the prized pair, the fruit of a five-year quest, is still sitting, unsold, in a beautifully carved box at Samurai’s headquarters.
For Nogami-san, though, it wasn’t really about creating a consumer product. It was about breaking new ground and realizing a seemingly impossible dream.
Regardless of whether he’d managed to sell them, he’d done what nobody had managed to do before: he’d produced a pair of 100% Japanese jeans.
Organic Growth at the Samurai Farm
Since then, with the help of a very small crew of paid farmers and a slew of volunteers, they’ve managed to grow more Japanese cotton than ever before. They’ve nearly tripled their yield in the last three years (2020-2023).
Growth has been slow and entirely organic, with all planting and harvesting done by hand. They only use organic fertilizers, and they don’t use pesticides of any kind.
Pests devour many of their plants, and just as many of them die before reaching maturity. This is the price Nogami-san is willing to pay to take Japanese cotton production back to its pure, organic roots.
The man-hours involved in this undertaking boggle the mind. From weeding, planting, and tending to harvesting, dyeing, weaving, and sewing, the project is driven more by passion and community spirit than by profit.
When you add up the man hours and other investments involved in turning the cotton into a sellable product, it’s enough to make an accountant’s eyes water. Nothing in the Samurai Cotton Project line-up is a money-maker for the brand—far from it.
Samurai retailers and fans are doing their part by cleaning out stock at record speeds, but robust orders and sales aren’t doing much to pull Nogami-san’s passion project into profitable territory. It may take years to scale the project, but, in Nogami-san’s eyes, it’s already a success.
Beyond Basics: Yarns Become Garms
In 2021, Samurai debuted their full-fledged Samurai Cotton Project line, which featured a range of cotton tees and sweats, all of them made with a mixture of Japanese and Western cotton.
Naturally, Nogami-san’s instinct was to make a loopwheeled fabric from the yarn. They tried this, but the machines broke down. They tweaked the yarns and experimented with modern knitting machines until they found a combination that meshed perfectly.
The result is a soft and textured cotton fabric that feels very similar to loopwheeled cotton.
Rolls of this fabric are shipped from Wakayama to Kyoto, where it is sewn using vintage machines, including the Union Special 36200 for the major seams and a three-needle binder for the neck. They’re then garment dyed in Kyoto (long the spiritual home of Japanese dyeing).
I recognised that this represented something entirely new, so I jumped on the announcement, grabbing one of the creamy henley tees when they were still hot off the presses.
The fit and construction were impeccable, but what immediately impressed me was the cotton itself—a seedy, slubby, and creamy fabric that I couldn’t (and still can’t) get enough of.
I was so impressed that I grabbed the henley tee in another colour, and, more recently, I added one of their sweatshirts to my collection (my first made-in-Japan sweatshirt).
I’ll continue to add more Samurai Cotton Project pieces to my collection, simply because nobody in the industry is doing basics like this. I love my other made-in-Japan basics, but Samurai’s homegrown cotton just hits different.
Weight plays a big part in this. They list the weight as 16 oz., which might be by sq. metre rather than yard, but, however they’re measuring it, these are some of the beefiest tees on the market.
The other big draw card is the colour. Samurai Cotton Project began with a trio of colours: Kinari (ecru), Kuri (brown), and Kuromame (black). Each of these colours has a story behind it.
The local farmers in Sasayama mostly grow either black soybeans or “Tamba” chestnuts (large and lustrous chestnuts—a delicacy in Japan). With their trademark ingenuity, Samurai has turned both crops into garment dyes.
The juice from the soybeans (formerly treated as a waste-product by the farmers) was turned into a natural black dye. It’s not exactly a deep and lustrous black, but that’s the point.
The charcoal tone looks lived in and slightly muted, making it the perfect complement for faded denim.
The Kuri is the result of a rich brown tone extracted from the skins of the chestnuts. It’s about as earthy a brown colour as you’ll find anywhere, and, more than the black, it showcases the slubs in the yarns beautifully. It will work brilliantly with blue, green, and cream pieces.
Last, and my favourite of the bunch, is the creamy ecru. It doesn’t really have a parallel in the world of well-made basics. It’s not just the natural, unbleached tone of the cotton; it’s also the seeds and stems, a small amount of which have been allowed to remain in the mix.
They fleck the surface. From a distance, it looks like a soft and muted cream. Up close, though, you’ll find brown freckles.
Samurai have been experimenting with the colours, introducing a new, lighter version of their brown Kuri. Knowing Samurai, they’ll find a way to introduce some indigo to the mix before long.
SCP Denim: Mixing Japanese and Western Cotton
In addition to tees and sweats, the Samurai Cotton Project line also includes denim pieces (albeit with substantially less sticker shock than those initial jeans from 2013).
The warp in the SCP denim is made from imported cotton; the weft is made from the same yarns they use for their sweats and tees (mixed Japanese and Western cotton).
They’re now growing some of this Western cotton on their Sasayama cotton farm. In time, they’ll be able to replace the imported cotton with homegrown Western cotton, making the Samurai Cotton Projects line an entirely Japanese affair.
The addition of Japanese cotton to the weft yarns seems to make a significant difference. Early adopters have reported that it’s some of the comfiest denim they’ve ever owned.
We’ve yet to see a pair entered into the Indigo Invitational, so we don’t know how the denim fades, but we have seen one of their workshirts entered into Year Three of the Redline Rally.
The SCP Work Shirt is being faded by Shawn Cash (aka @missouridenimdad), who won last year’s Rally with a brilliant and ultra-heavy Samurai Chore Coat. He’s on pace to do his favourite brand proud this year with another run at the podium.
After just two months of wear and frequent washes, Shawn says that he smiles every time he puts on the shirt each morning. “At a distance,” he says, “it’s a simple work shirt, but up close, it’s a perfectly woven and stitched masterpiece!”
He calls it a “must have” and gushes about its comfort and fade potential. Like the Samurai Cotton Project tees and sweats, the denim pieces are distilled to their essence and perfected.
Although the pieces are as minimalist and classic as they come, Samurai Cotton Project still represents something entirely new. They’re doing basics and timeless denim pieces, but they’re not doing them in the old-fashioned way (at least not the way they’ve always been done in Japan).
They’re walking into entirely new territory for Japanese brands, and, for observers like us, this is tremendously exciting. They’ve breathed new life, not just into the Japanese denim industry, but also into the community around their farm.
They provide seasonal work for the disabled and the disadvantaged in Sasayama, and they’ve established education programs in the local elementary schools that are helping teach the next generation about Japanese cotton farming.
They’re also using shipping containers to build a few small buildings on the farm. The Sasayama Cotton Base will become a destination for local farmers who want to participate in the project and for those who want to experience Japanese cotton farming up close.
They’re producing stellar garments, but, more than this, they’re turning the production of these garments into an intensely local and grassroots affair.
Best of all, they seem to be doing this without a profit motive. They’re doing something far more important than making and selling clothes. With the help of volunteers and staff who contribute their time freely, they’re building something that might become, in time, Samurai’s most lasting legacy.
They’ve planted seeds deep in fertile soil that are only just beginning to germinate and take root. Pure-of-heart pioneers, they’re in a field of their own.
Experience Japanese Cotton for Yourself
The best place to find Samurai Cotton Project is at Samurai’s webshop. You can also find a list of their retailers here (which includes our partners Redcast Heritage and Blue in Green).
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We are deeply indebted to Dave Stewart of Japanalogue for helping us tell this story fully and accurately.
