The purpose of this study was to clarify how the term kimono became popular as a way of referring to Japanese traditional clothing.
We collected articles from the Yomiuri and Asahi newspapers in which the term kimono in kanji, katakana, and hiragana were used by searching those words on their online databases, and analyzed them in order to find out the meaning of the word, as well as the sex and the nationality of the people who wore or possessed kimono in the articles.
We found the following: Firstly, kimono once referred to clothing in general or nagagi (long garment), regardless of which sex it was meant for. Secondly, kimono came to mean Japanese traditional clothing in the 1900s after the word “kimono” was established in Western languages. Thirdly, the word “kimono” tended to be used for women while wafuku and nihonfuku were gender-neutral words. In addition, it became increasingly common to write kimono in hiragana in the 1960s, during which time the main consumers of kimono were women, who preferred that it be written that way.
