
As part of the power-saving campaigns following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant...the comfortable Hawaiian shirt seems to be a natural fit for Japan's "super cool biz" campaign. However...there remains a deep-rooted aversion to government employees dressed in Hawaiian shirts, commonly referred to as "aloha shirts" in Japan. That's ironic, because the aloha shirt has its origin in clothing manufactured by Japanese immigrants, said Ryoichi Kobayashi, president of Toyo Enterprise Co., and holder of the "aloha shirt" registered trademark in Japan. "The traditional 'yuzen' dyers in Kyoto printed patterns on fabrics and exported them to Hawaii through Japanese immigrants," he said. "The shirt was thus born out of Japanese technology"....Aloha shirts thus have close ties with Japan, but when postwar Japan began to "reimport" them from the United States, wearing one was seen as embodying the war conquerer's nation...more...