Japanese firemen’s coats from the 19th century
publicdomainreview.org
publicdomainreview.org
Anecdota told by a Japanese friend: father used to be a volunteer fireman in his town. He really liked it, but not from the reasons you might expect. First, it was because there were frequent drinking gatherings. But also, during a fire in a house, the firemen would go inside and throw everything out (often destroying them in the process) to avoid the fire being fed. This includes the family ancestors shrine, which the father took a great pleasure to destroy (I think because of how sacred it is). He enjoyed that for years before his wife made him stop because she was fed up of him going home drunk.
Also, a some point in the year in Winter, volunteers firemen go in the street and shot aloud things I didn’t understand for as a tradition to warn the neighbors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59qOsX-i2q8
Your an anecdote is pretty hilarious -- I remember seeing a shrine (Shinto) in my grandfather's house. But then there was also a Bhuddist thing ever you keep your ancestors' ashes. I wonder which one he enjoyed breaking. Perhaps both.
Edit: Here’s a video of some children in Hokkaido taking part in the tradition
Don't ever discredit a certain percentage of humans urge to destroy and break things, especially in a drunken rage. We spend a great deal of effort keeping people well socialized, despite plenty of pent up anger.
That's why we have professionally trained police and firemen now. Things are always improving for the better.
Considering the official explanation of it is "avoid providing fuel to a raging fire", and those weren't the only things they were breaking, I'm not sure how an outsider would be expected to notice.
Getting to beat down a door, or take a chainsaw to someone's roof is definitely a good time. Even better is cutting apart a car with hydraulic tools.
That's... an interesting thing to put on your fire coat. I bet a lot of modern departments would love these. They are all about identifying as their individual groups and taking pride in being a team. Aramid is naturally the yellowish color that bunker gear already is but can be dyed, although you might have issues with fumes from the dye being heated in fires.
You could skip bunker gear entirely though and just do a startup making custom jackets like this. The aramaid used for bunker gear is woven so just develop a machine to weave using x number of colored threads and do fairly simple patterns like this. This would beat the heck out of embroidered jackets for teams/agencies/social clubs too and you could even resurrect some historical art like this spider. There's already computerized embroidery, computerized custom woven jackets would be awesome. Forget "ugly Christmas sweaters".
In the past beautiful patterns and designs in textiles showed pride and wealth, now a name sewn on the label does. Resurrecting stuff like this with tech, so that it is affordable to the masses, would be an awesome thing.
I for one would love to have something akin to my winter Carhartt gear with some cool woven scene on them instead of plain, boring, without-imagination black. I'd even be willing to pay a 10-20% premium for it and order it months before the seasons I'd be wearing it in.
The only real place you have cool customization like this still going on with any regularity is sneakers.
I'm not saying you did anything wrong. Just sharing why I think your comment was downvoted.
I think the problem is that you have a thing with no moat. Once you start getting any traction, you'll be hit by the drop-ship and print-on-demand guys who'll lemonize the market. You see this with 'Vaporwave' and 'retrowave' clothing which had a short Renaissance.
The opportunity is for the guys close to manufacturing who can rapidly print out each one and then spend the rest of their budget on marketing (say on Instagram).
Alternatively if you have a big brand, you can pull off stuff like Supreme's Dragon Work set (which I do have) but otherwise it's hard for people to spend because they'll assume they're buying from a fly by night print on demand Shopify site.
Very surprised that wool was not used (it is fire-resistant and wicks sweat). Was wool not available to Japan during this era?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_domestic_sheep#...
http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n2207/pdf/ch12...
". 'As animals are not used for milk, draught, or food, and there are no pasture lands, both the country and the farm-yards have a singular silence and an inanimate look.'1 She missed the sounds: '...a mean looking dog and a few fowls being the only representatives of domestic animal life. I long for the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep.'2 There were also very few horses: 'there is little traffic, and very few horses are kept, one, two, or three constituting the live stock of a large village.'3 Horses were not used for ploughing, nor, even, were they used for carrying. 'Very few horses are kept here. Cows and coolies carry much of the merchandise, and women as well as men carry heavy loads.'4 So rare were domestic animals even in the later nineteenth century, that they were exhibited like exotic species: '...monkey theatres and dog theatres, two mangy sheep and a lean pig attracting wondering crowds, for neither of these animals is known in this region of Japan."
Source: used to work as a shipyard welder