In the acclaimed movie Tokyo story (1953) we can see Shukichi, an elderly provincial man who goes to visit his grown children in Tokyo, wear a suit and tie in a large number of scenes, many of which are domestic and informal.
Given his age and the small amount of years after the second world war it seems unlikely to me that such a trend starting after WWII would have reached even the geriatric older generations so quickly. Also my mental image of Pre WWII Japan is of a quite insular and secluded country that didn't want anything to do with foreigners so it would also be surprising to me if these clothes would have been widely adopted before then.
However I am not even a historian, let alone someone specialising in Japan so I would be glad if someone who is more knowledgeable could contribute. Thanks!
Long story short, most major Japanese politicians and businessmen started dressing in a Western fashion during the Meiji Era.
Now for a longer answer.
While I am not a historian of Japanese clothing per se, I can tell you about late 19th century and early 20th century Japanese society.
It goes like this. Long before the Second World War, Japanese society was indeed heavily secluded from the outside world. During the Tokugawa Shougnate (1600-1868) which followed a period of internecine civil war (the sengoku period), Japan heavily isolated itself from outside influences, only allowing a small Dutch trading post at Nagasaki. After a bad experience with Catholicism, which the Tokugawa shogunate banned in 1614, the Japanese cut themselves off from the outside world.
During this time period, Japanese society calcified. The dominant samurai class of warriors no longer had anyone to fight and, as a result, lost some of their fighting potency. Similarly, the Emperor was impotent and the real power rested with the shogun, the feudal leader of Japan. Two hundred years past and, for the most part, Japanese society remained relatively stable, with very little innovation in terms of fighting tactics or technology.
That changed when American Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to foreign trade forcibly in 1853. This “opening,” assisted by Perry’s utilization of his advanced cannonry for shock and awe, was completed by American Diplomat Townsend Harris (who has sadly been forgotten by many historians) in the “Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1858)” which formally opened Japan to foreign trade, especially with America.
Not everyone was happy with opening the country to foreign trade. Soon, friction developed between two rival groups in Japan, the supporters of restoration of Imperial rule and those dedicated to a philosophy of sonnō jōi (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians). The result was the brief Boshin War, in which pro-Imperial forces succeeded in defeating the rebelling samurai and supporters of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
The succeeding Emperor, Meiji, was Emperor when Japan modernized. Western clothing, banking, science, weaponry, and education methods were all imported and stamped firmly onto the upper reaches of Japanese society. While traditional values were still an important aspect of society and kimono and state Shinto were still heavily integrated into the Japanese ethos, Western dress and practices were already being implemented in Japanese society.
This accelerated during the Taishō period (1912-1926), where Japanese society completed its transformation from middling backwater into a regional power. It was only during the reign of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito as he is often known in Western press) that a small backlash against Western norms and eccentricities became a bit more common.
After defeat in World War II, Japanese society Westernized even quicker, something that John Dower covers in Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. It’s worth taking a look at if the westernization of Japanese society is interesting for you.
So, in your case, the elderly man who was in his 70s or 80s in the 1950s would have already been exposed to Western clothes and norms for most of his life.
If you’re interested in another film that covers a part of this interesting time in Japanese history, I recommend The Wind Rises by Miyazaki Hayao. It covers a lot of ground in the 20s, 30s, and 40s and though it’s ostensibly fictional, it gives a great feel for the dichotomy that defined Imperial Japan.
I hope this helps!
Great Sources on this Topic:
On Tokugawa Japan and the Meiji Restoration: The Making of Modern Japan by Marius B. Jansen
On Townsend Harris and his Mission: Shimoda Story by Oliver Statler
On the Emperor Meiji and his Reign: Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912 by Donald Keene
On the Emperors Taishō and Shōwa: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
On the Transformation of Japanese Society during WWII: Tojo: The Last Banzai by Courtney Browne
On Japanese Society after World War II: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower
(Edit: Typos)
(Edit 2: Corrections. Thanks /u/ParallelPain.)
To give some concrete info to what /u/NEStalgia314 wrote:
In the Bakumatsu, already some people were wearing western dress for diplomatic or military purposes. Here's the last Shōgun in western dress, and here's members of the Kiheitai of Chōshū in western clothing. On Meiji 4.IX.4 (October 17, 1871), the Meiji emperor issued an order to the inner court, calling traditional dress copied from China "weak," referencing mythological times before such dresses when the first emperors led the Japanese people in war, and ordered new dresses made. You can see in the early 1872 photograph of the main diplomats of the Iwakura Mission, four of five were wearing western dress (Itō Hirobumi and Ōkubo Toshimichi, likely the two leaders pushing such policies, on the right). Iwakura Tomomi himself, though not wearing western dress, at least had a top hat. He would switch to western dress half way through the mission. The Council of State orders, with quite detailed designs outlining the new dress, was issued on On Meiji 5.XI.12 (December 12, 1872, less than a month before they switched to Gregorian calendar). It states in no uncertain terms that traditional dress relegated to religious dress, but were otherwise abolished. And while there were many follow-up orders like designs for specific people or like the order clarifying which were super formal dress and when to wear less formal ones (both western), for government officials in public, that was pretty much that. Though privately it seemed to have taken quite a bit longer (Iwakura Tomomi seemed to have still prefered traditional clothes in private). Female dress seem to have taken quite a bit longer, beginning with the wives of diplomates in 1880 (changed to depending on situation in 1884), and then in 1886 the wives of members of Imperial family, government officials, and aristocrats were to wear western dress.
The general populace of course took much longer. According to architect Kon Wajirō's research, in Tōkyō Ginza in 1925, probably the most westernized place in Japan at the time, 67% of male and only 1% of female wore western clothing.
Since the subject of the Meiji Restoration and the emergence of the modern nation state has been brought up:
The role of clothing is closely tied to the construction of modern gender roles, which accompanied the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
The Meiji Restoration took place during the age of European colonization. This also showed to the world, especially to Asia, that the Chinese empire, once center of the East-Asian cultural sphere, was unable to face these European powers on equal footing. Consequently, this brought into question the validity of Chinese values for the peoples of Asia.
We can see that this was also reflected in the physical representation of the person by his/her own body, which became a target of state policies by the Meiji reformers. In 1871, the wearing of not only traditional topknots, but also long, untidy hair, was forbidden by law. This apparently was even forcibly implemented (officials would literally forcibly cut the hair of villagers, apparently, Osa, pg. 303). Policies such as these may thus be interpreted in the context of Japan’s attempts to "exit" from a Sinocentric worldview and "join" the superior West (Osa, pg. 303; Cheng, pg. 14–15). Likewise, clothing for officials was regulated: official, especially diplomatic, attire was replaced with uniforms modeled after European military styles. The Tenno, now redefined as the nation’s sovereign, became a center of public attention. He was consciously presented to the public in Western-styled military uniform, with groomed hair and mustache, similar to the European leaders at the time—this stood in stark contrast to the old, effeminate, look of the imperial courtier (Osa, pg. 304).
This facilitated the emergence of a new masculine ideal within the elites: the Western gentleman, who identified himself by his adherence, fetishization even, of Western attire and behavior. This ideal, however, was not without critique: the gentleman often became a target of caricature due to the perceived obsession with superficiality, such as looks, and his general idolization of Western civilization (more on the Meiji gentleman and his shift away from an emphasis of looks towards a definition through character throughout the following decades in Karlin's both references, and Roden).
But especially accompanying Japan’s victories in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, other concepts of manliness gained currency, which were characterized by a more "Japanese" outlook, often in stark contrast to the gentleman, which was redefined as a "effiminate" type of masculinity in comparison (Karlin 2014, ch. 1 introduces several such groups). This is not unexpected, since, as Cheng (pg. 15) writes, “Western tropes of imperialism that posited a ‘masculine’ West to the ‘feminine’ Japanese were redeployed in the late nineteenth-century construction of a new martial model of Japanese masculinity, defined in contradistinction to the ‘effeminate’ Chinese man.’” Of these, certainly the resurrection of the idea of bushidō (or, maybe we should say, the very invention of it) was the most prominent and enduring.
Western clothing was introduced more or less with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. It was conciously perceived as a means to perform "civilization" in front of the superior Western powers, and therefore adopted by the new Japanese government as official attire. Men who wanted to belong to a new elite society often adapted such attire as well, although it is questionable how many, and in which contexts, the common people did adapt new styles of clothing.
Unfortunately, I don't have anything on the following decades, ca. 1900-1945, at hand, so that much from my side as supplementary information :)
References and further reading (all but Osa's essay should be available on JSTOR):
Cheng, Eileen J. “Performing the Revolutionary: Lu Xun and the Meiji Discourse on Masculinity.” In Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 27:1 (2015), pg. 1–43.
Karlin, Jason G. "The Gender of Nationalism: Competing Masculinities in Meiji Japan." In The Journal of Japanese Studies 28:1 (2002), pg. 41-77.
Karlin, Jason G. Gender and Nation in Meiji Japan: Modernity, Loss, and the Doing of History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2014.
Osa Shizue. “Kokuminka to jendā.” In Jendāshi. Edited by Fukutō Sanae, Narita Ryūichi, and Ōguchi Yūjirō. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2014, pg. 301–345.
Roden, Donald. “Thoughts on the Early Meiji Gentleman.” In Gendering Modern Japanese History. Edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, pg. 61–98.
