Well some people actually do still wear kimonos as a part of their everyday.

Before we start, we should define what kimono are. In Japanese, 着物 kimono literally means 'thing you wear'. In other words, for Japanese people, kimono literally just meant 'clothes'. Anything you wore was a kimono. This only changed with the introduction of Western clothes which were called 洋服 youfuku, literally meaning 'Western garments'. Now a days, when someone says kimono in America, it conjures up images of elaborate traditional dress and images of elegant women or high quality dress.

But everyday clothes were also called kimono. And kimono are not exclusively worn by women. The traditional clothes of Japanese men can also be called kimono. Pop media has contributed to the image of 'exotic' Asian women or geisha and the kimono has taken almost fetish like levels of sexual association by some people (in a similar way the china dress is).

In my post, when I talk about kimono, it is generally inclusive of all traditional Japanese clothes, as worn by men, women and children, as well as the different clothes worn by elites in the capital as well as the farmers in the fields. Now let's begin.

The first shift from kimono to western dress began with the Meiji Period during the mid 19th century, after the opening of the ports by Perry. It was a part of the large importation of various technologies, knowledge & information, methods, foods, and various other things from the West.

A big proponent of adopting Western clothing was military dress.

The Japanese government were moving away from the feudal samurai - lord system of military power in favor of establishing a central, government funded and nationally associated professional military in the style of Prussia or the British Empire.

The government forbid military men from wearing kimono to any official functions and/or while on active duty, forcibly committing a massive organization in Japan to the Western dress. Government officials were also bound by similar rules put forth for the bureaucrats.

You can see here an illustration of what the average officers and line infantry would have looked like in the newly formed Japanese Imperial forces.

This was a time of many firsts for the Japanese military, including the first time they had a really unified command and a standardized uniform, uniting the armed forces of Japan in mind and body.

The other big driving force of adopting Western clothing were Japanese elites.

To see how rapid the changes made during the Meiji Restoration were, look no further than the Emperor himself. This is what Emperor Meiji looked like in the early days of 1872.

Later that year, he would cut off his top knot, a sign of hundreds of years of tradition, and adopt Western dress to symbolize his support for progress, pragmatic adoption of Western things, and a new Japan. This is what the Emperor looked like just one year.

The Meiji Restoration was a top-down movement to rapidly industrialize Japan and to make the transition smoother, the ruling elites of Japan believed that they needed to be able to absorb Western culture, language, science, and ways if they were to also be able to rapidly learn Western medicine, military strategies, economic systems, and earn a strong position in global politics.

This led the elites of Japan to lead the way and pioneer adoption of all things Western. Western food, Western entertainment (to put the Meiji Restoration in context, Western composers like Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, and Dvořák were all alive and making music during this time. Mozart and Beethoven had only been dead for maybe 20 years), Western literature, and of course, Western dress.

Most notably, men adopted suits rather quickly and it became the norm to wear a suit to work for the upper and middle class. Lower class citizens generally kept wearing their kimono, especially farmers. The Meiji Restoration mostly focused on urban populations, while rural areas generally just kept going about daily life as they always did as the gap between urban and rural areas grew wider and wider.

Another notable thing is that women generally did NOT adopt Western dress. Many new ideas and ways of thinking were being born in Japan but gender equality was not one of them. Female participation in the labor market did not change a great deal during the Meiji Period and most women remained the masters of the home and hearth. This meant that they still spent the majority of their day at home, child rearing and maintaining the household.

Women quickly found that western dress was incredibly impractical for the inside of the average Japanese home. So the vast majority continued to wear kimono at home. As a matter of fact, most men also continued to wear the kimono at home as well. They would wake up, change into their suits, go to work, then come home and change into more comfortable kimono as home wear.

For elites, some women would also wear Western style dresses outside but many continued to wear kimono even outside. One of the big reasons was that for the first time, sumptuary laws from the Edo period that forbid the common people from wearing kimonos with silk or ostentatious colors, designs, etc. were repealed. The average Japanese women could now wear glamorous kimono that were previously only permitted on those of incredibly high status or even restricted to only the Imperial court.

The design of the kimono changed quite a bit. To the outside world looking in, one may not be able to tell the difference but for the average Japanese woman, the changes were huge. They were suddenly allowed to buy (and able to afford!) silk, they could pick and choose designs that previously would have literally been forbidden to someone of low status. It sparked a massive uptick in the domestic textile industry and helped propel a major part of Japanese light industry development during the time period.

The design of the kimono also changed. For example, the obi, the sash that is tied around the waist that holds the kimono together while also being decorative. Because of the repealing of sumptuary laws and a general change in the way society thought about clothes in public spaces, the way one could wear a kimono was relaxed quite a bit during the Meiji Period. For example, in this picture, the obi is tilted and simply tucked as opposed to being tied in a more complex and 'proper' way that would have been necessary for clothing etiquette during the Edo Period.

The obi was also featured lower and 'boxier' than in previous designs, as a result of the influence of Western dresses. With lower, boxier obi, the sillouhette of a woman's kimono now looked similar to that of a Western dress worn over a corset that accentuated the bust and hips into an S curve.

After the Meiji Period, Japan enters the Taisho Period, between World War I and World War II. Japan experiences even more freedom and liberation of clothing culture and more people wear Western clothing during everyday moments, including casual Western clothing. Western clothing is no longer something simply worn at work. This is also a period of a rise in Western architecture(http://markystar.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/053.jpg) that further facilitated the wearing of Western dress (particularly in the home).

The kimono becomes increasingly out of fashion when worn outside of the home and adoption of Western clothes steadily increases. Western clothes are associated with progress, civilization and modernity while kimono are symbols of the past. That being said, there were reactionaries that disapproved of the rapid changes of Japanese society refuse to adopt Western ways and Western clothing.

By the time World War II ends and Japan begins to rebuild, Western clothes are a dominant part of Japanese clothing culture. In most work places, especially corporate office jobs, the business suit is standard and often required. Many uniforms are Western style. And casual Western clothing like shirts, pants, etc. are everywhere. By the 1950s and 1960s, much of Japan is wearing Western clothes on a near constant basis, with traditional dress being taken out during the summer for festivals, religious ceremonies, holidays, etc.

http://markystar.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/053.jpg To say that people have 'stopped wearing' kimono is a little misleading. The vast majority of Japanese people wear kimonos several times a year, especially during summer. It's not uncommon to see Japanese people wearing kimono on the streets, even in major metropolitan cities.

During the summer time, which is unbearably humid and hot in Japan, many people wear simple kimono because they are cooler and light, helping people deal with the heat.

And it's almost a staple to wear kimono to festivals throughout the year in Japan, whether they be children, teenagers, or adults.

If anything Japanese people wear their traditional dress a great deal more than most other cultures.