The purpose of this paper is to clarify how the study of clothing hygiene has developed in modern Japan.

  Focusing on the works of three medical scientists, Yokote Chiyonosuke, Toda Shōzō, and Ogata Kōhei, we investigated how the context of their research had changed, mainly based on Yokote's book, “Eiseigaku Kōgi” and academic journals, “Kokumin Eisei” and “Ifuku Gakkai Zasshi”.

  In the Meiji era, Yokote conducted research on clothes based on German hygiene, a cutting-edge approach in those days. He arranged it to suit the actual situation of Japanese clothing life. After that, Toda and his students expanded their research and showed the basic data of clothing hygiene, which established their theoretical basis. During these processes, Ogata founded the Clothing Research Group, which is the predecessor of the Japanese Association for Clothing Studies, in Showa 24 (1949). Ogata considered that the Japanese Association for Clothing Studies should be a society for the study of clothing as a science closely related to human life, and its activity should be interdisciplinary.