Toda Siblings suit

[faith]

Many civilian men wore kokuminfuku, in life as well as in films, particularly after 1940.  (The women's version was bad hair and mompei.)  Films of that era consistently show men wearing them, particularly worker groups.  E.g. amongst many:  Minato no Inochi [1944], where the longshoremen usually
 dispense with the jackets to work in their safari-style shirtsleeves, but keep their peaked caps on;  Minshu no Teki [1946 under SCAP but depicting wartime] has all the factory workers buttoned up in them on the job; in the romantic Nessa no Chigai [1940], Hasegawa Kazuo forgoes the uniform top
 --presumably for fashion reasons!-- but retains the jodhpur-style breeches and gaiters/shoes or high boots which were the bottom half of the uniform. (He is a civilian engineer in Manchuria.)
  What is interesting about  Saburi Shin in TODA is that he is not wearing this bottom half, but instead normal long trousers, suggesting his is a "dress" or low-key version for the funeral.  These long trousers are, in fact, the oddest part of Saburi's outfit compared to all I have seen.  Kabuki
 and bunraku performers (including children) in public, for example, wore the full kit, usually including caps, for public occasions and photo-ops such as tours to "the mainland" (=Manchuria), visiting shrines, or welcoming Hitler Youth groups to the theatre; in all these photos I have yet only
 found the onnagata Nakamura Utaemon VI in an ordinary tie & jacket, but even he wears the jodhpurs/gaiters bottom half.
  A doctoral thesis just begging to be done!
  FB 
 
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