Selling jackets with built-in fans, neck coolers and T-shirts that feel cold, Japanese firms are tapping into a growing market for products to help people handle the summer heat.
Japan — like other countries — is seeing ever-hotter summers. This July was the warmest in 100 years, with at least 53 people dying of heatstroke and almost 50,000 needing emergency medical attention.
Workman, which makes clothes for construction workers, launched a version of their fan-fitted jackets adapted for the high street in 2020 as demand grew.
Photo: AFP
The mechanism is simple — two electric, palm-sized fans powered by a rechargeable battery are fitted into the back of the jacket.
They draw in air to then deliver a breeze — at variable speeds — onto the wearer’s body.
The jackets retail for 12,000 to 24,000 yen (US$82-164).
“As the weather gets hotter, people who have never worn fan-equipped clothing before want to find ways to cool down... so more people are interested in buying it,” Workman spokesman Yuya Suzuki said.
“Just like you feel cool when you are at home with a fan, you feel cool just by wearing (the jacket) because the wind is blowing through your body all the time,” he said.
AGEING POPULATION AT RISK
Japanese summers are known to be hot and humid, but this July Tokyo really sweated.
The average temperature was 28.7 Celsius, the highest on record since 1875.
Heatstroke is particularly deadly in Japan, which has the second-oldest population in the world after Monaco.
More than 80 percent of heat-related deaths in the past five years have been among senior citizens.
“Some people die from heatstroke,” said Nozomi Takai of MI Creations, a company selling neck-cooling tubes mainly to factory and warehouse workers.
“Individuals as well as companies are putting more and more effort into measures against it every year,” Takai said.
The gel inside his firm’s brightly colored tubes — priced at 2,500 yen — is cool enough to use after 20 minutes in the fridge.
Wearing it on the neck will “considerably cool the whole body” for about an hour, she said.
Takai’s company joined an expo this year on “measures against extreme heat” in Tokyo to showcase new products that help users stay cool in the scorching heat.
At another booth, Tokyo-based company Liberta had a series of clothing including T-shirts and arm sleeves using prints that make users feel cool — especially when they sweat.
The prints use materials such as xylitol that feel cool when reacting with water and sweat, they said. Chikuma, an Osaka-based company, has even created office jackets and dresses equipped with electric fans.
“We developed them with the idea that it could be proposed in places where casual wear is not allowed,” Yosuke Yamanaka of Chikuma said.
Regular fan-fitted clothes can make the wearer look puffy, as they need to be zipped up, and cuffs are tight.
But jackets developed jointly by Chikuma, power tool maker Makita and textile giant Teijin do not need to be buttoned up, thanks to a special structure that sandwiches the fans in two layers and keeps the cool air in, Yamanaka said.
METRO-SEXUAL PARASOLS
Parasols, which are commonly associated in Japan with skin-tone-conscious women protecting against a summer tan, are now proving more popular with men too.
Komiyama Shoten, a small, luxury umbrella maker in Tokyo, began making parasols for men around 2019 after the environment ministry encouraged people to use them.
Before, many male customers thought parasols “were for women and they were embarrassed,” the owner Hiroyuki Komiya said.
“Once you use it, you can’t let go,” he added.
On the busy streets of popular tourist destination Asakusa, Kiyoshi Miya, 42, said he decided to “use his umbrella as a parasol.”
“It’s like I’m always in the shade and the wind feels cool,” he said.
Another visitor, Shoma Kawashima, wore a wearable fan around his neck to stay cool under the blazing sun.
“It’s so hot I want to be naked,” the 21-year-old said. Gadgets are helpful, but “not a solution” to rising temperatures, he added.
There was a time, a few decades ago, when the men who owned the world’s biggest pornography businesses were happy to be famous. They paraded a lifestyle they hoped looked glamorous, appearing in public dressed in silk pajamas or with a woman in swimwear on each arm. Porn moguls like Hustler’s Larry Flynt or Playboy’s Hugh Hefner were household names. “Say what you want about these old perverts, who once set the tone of our sexual culture, but at least you knew who they were and what they were selling,” Patricia Nilsson writes in her new book, Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification
Speculation started to fly last month that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates running in the November elections wanted to keep their distance from party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文). That some in the KMT were concerned that Cheng’s firm ideological adherence to the “one China principle” is no secret. There had already been pushback from within the party on issues ranging from the budget to defense, as well as over some of her more hardline comments. The timing made sense, however. The KMT party congress unity love fest wrapped up at the end of July. Through the primaries and up to
In 1904 the Japanese introduced caning to Taiwan. As a punishment, caning was applied by the Japanese to Taiwanese and Chinese subjects, never to the Japanese themselves (it had been outlawed in Japan in 1882). An imperial and colonial act, caning thus functioned to define and display social class boundaries. So it is with the new legislation permitting caning proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators last week. According to the KMT proposal, individuals committing major fraud, aggravated sexual assault, driving under the influence of drugs and child abuse may be subject to caning. These are high-profile offenses that generate great
OCT. 5 to OCT. 11 Many worshippers of Taoist deity Lord Su (蘇府王爺) had never witnessed his “north-south grand inspection tour” of central Taiwan. The historic procession last took place in 1969, and before that, in 1893. Lukang’s Fengtian Temple (奉天宮) in Changhua County last Sunday completed Lord Su’s sixth grand inspection tour ever, taking its three main statues to settlements from Miaoli to Yunlin over 10 days. According to news reports, this year’s event also included a boat patrol that set out from Taichung, bringing luck and safety to fishers and offshore wind farm workers. Why did it
RSS