Enter the largest clothing factory in Kansai, Japan: Ring Jacket factory tour

Interview/Photography by Mei Chiu

In May 2018, after two years of collaboration, we visited the Ring Jacket factory in Kaizuka, Osaka for the first time. It is close to Sakai and Kishiwada, two textile communities that flourished during the Taisho (1912–1926) and Showa (1926–1989) periods. However, many factories later moved to China in pursuit of lower labor costs, or closed down because they could not keep up with the times. The area no longer has the prosperity it once had. According to Mr. Sasamoto, the brand business manager, the Ring Jacket factory is currently the largest clothing factory in the Kansai region. Under the scorching sun, we were in a residential area, hoping to catch a glimpse of it.

Before actually seeing something, people always imagine what they will see next based on their past experiences or prejudices. When we hear the word "largest scale", we think it will be like a technology factory, with neatly arranged factories or even parks, and moving within the park may require transportation. But the Ring Jacket factory not only had no brand signs, but also no clear fences. After we got out of the station, we followed Mr. Sasamoto's footsteps, passing by houses and eggplant fields, and through winding paths. Only when we heard the sound of machines running did we realize that we had arrived at the factory .


The hanging paper pattern, the left one is for girls, the right one is for boys

Mr. Sasamoto said that Ring Jacket was first founded in 1954 by five tailors who shared the same ideals. At that time, the Kansai textile industry was extremely prosperous, and many companies had factories close to each other. They competed with each other and learned from each other, but eventually fell together: "Ring Jacket did not want to be influenced too much, so it was located in a farther place."

The factory, which has been located here since its inception, consists of three buildings in total: one is the pattern making and cutting room, one is the guest reception room and the factory director's office, and the other largest is the sewing and ironing room, which occupies only about half the size of a playground. There are no more than 100 people working in the factory, and here they create Japanese Italian suits that are popular all over the world.

As soon as we entered the factory, Mr. Sasamoto first took us to greet the factory manager Mr. Murakami, and asked him to introduce us to the factory and the birth process of Ring Jacket. Mr. Murakami, wearing an ordinary short-sleeved white shirt, welcomed us into his wooden office with a smile. When he heard that we were from Taiwan, he excitedly spoke in Kansai accent about his memory of having seen Ouyang Feifei in person, as if she were a kind grandfather he met in the shopping street.

Mr. Murakami is kind and humorous. He has a straight back and walks briskly. You can't tell that he is already in his seventies. He has more than 50 years of sewing experience. Every piece of clothing of Ring Jacket must pass his strict standards in terms of pattern and sewing before being delivered to customers.

Although Ring Jacket’s suits tend to be Italian-style, and Mr. Murakami once worked for the well-known Italian suit brand Kiton, Ring Jacket is not like many garment factories that buy samples, disassemble them, and then copy them. Nor does it directly use past experience as it is. Instead, it first conducts “context deconstruction,” which is what Japan is best at, to understand why the style it wants to learn can be so comfortable and chic, and then understands the differences in body shape between Easterners and Westerners before making improvements. Mr. Murakami said that it was because of this step that Ring Jacket became what it is today.



Mr. Murakami, the factory manager of Ring Jacket

"The president once told me that he wanted to make it in the Italian style. Although the company sent me to Italy for study, the Italians are not easy to deal with. They won't teach you the really important details, nor will they let you visit the factory. Our president went through a lot of trouble to ask the manufacturers one by one to let us in for a visit. After much difficulty, one company agreed, but they only let us see the surface. So I looked at the craftsmanship and racked my brains after returning, and finally I figured out the production method."


Ring Jacket factory plate printing press

Under the guidance of Mr. Murakami, we first entered the printing room. There are only three pattern makers in the entire factory, including the pattern room manager. For a well-known clothing brand like Ring Jacket, this is not a large number of staff.

After entering the printing room, accompanied by the sound of large printers printing paper plates, the printing room manager explained to us the secret of Ring Jacket's comfort. The most important part of men's clothing is the shoulders, and the soul of the Ring Jacket is also in the shoulders. In order to make the suits feel effortless to wear, pattern makers spent a lot of time and effort studying every line, every angle, and every data to create slightly curved shoulder lines to accommodate the problems of hunched shoulders and large shoulder angles that are common in Asian body types. At the same time, the style is tilted forward, and the placket lines are natural and beautiful, which solves the problem that many ready-made clothes will keep running up after the buttons are buttoned, causing fabric to accumulate on the chest and many wrinkles.

The pattern room manager of Ring Jacket said that the brand's clothing has specially adjusted the shoulder shape into an elegant curvature in order to solve the problem of round shoulders and sloping shoulders of Asians.

The external slogan of the Ring Jacket ready-to-wear series has always been "ready-to-wear clothes that are like custom-made clothes." Except for those who have actually felt the comfort of the clothes, modern people who are becoming increasingly numb to marketing copy may think that this is just a slogan. After all, which brand nowadays will not emphasize to the outside world that it has developed its products with great care?

However, the production process of Ring Jacket is much more complicated than imagined. Ironing alone requires more than ten times of ironing. Even with the assistance of many machines, if there is no professional master using his skillful hands to apply appropriate force to push, pull and shape, the finished suit will not have a natural fluffy and round feeling, and it will not feel light to wear.

After leaving the pattern room, we walked to the cloth stretching area and cutting room outside. In order to make the cutting machine work smoothly, Ring Jacket spent a lot of money to buy a steam cloth finishing machine. It uses high temperature to flatten the suit fabric that has been rolled into bundles for a long time and has been deformed to some extent. Mr. Sasamoto said: "It's like a hot spring for the fabric."

The manager of Ring Jacket's pattern room introduced us to the cloth stretching machine that they had purchased at great expense. It can straighten and iron the cloth that has been rolled up for a long time through steam, making it easier for the cutter to cut the cloth patterns.


The fabric to be cut will first be sent to the steam machine to be ironed and flattened, and then sent to the tailor after cooling.


The master craftsman responsible for cutting the raglan fabric

The ironed cloth will be sent to the cutting room, where two masters are responsible for cutting, one for solid fabrics and the other for plaid or striped fabrics. After cutting, colleagues in the same department will iron and inspect the cloth. Then the cut pieces will be sent to Kyushu for simple basting and then sent back to the Osaka factory for stitching.

The sewing room is the largest space in the entire factory, and the atmosphere is completely different from the preconceived impression. Generally, garment factories almost always have more female employees, but Ring Jacket's factory is composed entirely of young men, with only a few female and older male employees. Mr. Murakami said that many young Japanese men only realized that what they really like is suits after graduating from college. After all, Ring Jacket is a very representative brand in Japan, and it is very generous in teaching and educating. It even opens its factory to the public every month, allowing the general public who are interested in suits to visit and listen to Mr. Murakami's lectures. Many of today’s famous tailors were trained here, such as Kotaro Miyahira, who founded Corcos. In order to learn technology, these young people are not afraid of hard work, and Mr. Murakami is absolutely generous with his knowledge. Therefore, in this factory, the older employees are all from Osaka, and the younger employees come from all over Japan. There seems to be no sign of the massive labor shortage in Japan due to its declining birthrate.

In addition to the fact that the employee composition is different from that of general garment factories, there is no inhumane time pressure here. The most criticized thing about fast fashion is that it will do anything to achieve speed. Not only is there a requirement that a seam must be completed within a few seconds, some even time employees' toilet breaks.


Every fold in the clothes is ironed very carefully


A suit jacket will be ironed by machine at least ten times and manually ironed dozens of times.

Ironed collar

Clothes waiting for the next quality control

At Ring Jacket's factory, although there is pressure from delivery deadlines, they would rather make the best clothes and care more about quality than output. In order to make the finished garments as close to the feeling of being fully handmade as possible, they even set the speed of the factory machines to be slower than the industry standard. Because of the slow speed, human hands can slowly adjust the fabric and give the clothes some necessary but subtle space: "Many people think that good clothes are made because of good patterns, but this is not the case. A good pattern is just the beginning. If the subsequent sewing and ironing procedures are not done carefully, the clothes will not be three-dimensional. A suit must be three-dimensional to be comfortable to wear. But to make the suit three-dimensional, fine-tuning by human hands during sewing is very important, because some places need to be gathered and some places need to be opened."

Because of this, Mr. Murakami joked that his own suits might not look good when compared with other ready-made suits hung on a hanger: "Other ready-made brands will look very stiff and straight when hung on hangers or mannequins, but ours will have a lot of wrinkles. This is because hangers and mannequins are hard and lack elasticity. But our clothes are made to be worn by people, not to be displayed." After he finished speaking, his kind face, who was over 70 years old, revealed full of pride.

Finished quality control clothing


All buttons on Ring Jacket suit jackets are hand-sewn


Tools for sewing buttons


The sleeve slits, shoulder lines, and pocket seams are all hand-sewn.