As you may see from the images above, they wear "huge baggy trousers" that flare out wards from the hip and are tightened round the ankle accompanied with たび　- tabi : a kind of sock-shoe , a mitten for the foot.

As I was raised on building sites due to my Father being a carpenter I regarded the Japanese counterparts of my "baby sitters" from the past with awe. Having had experienced building site work myself, the design choice in their clothing made so much sense. The flared trouser, loose at the knee for bending and stretching (almost all joiners I knew had knee troubles) the mitten shoe allowing better grip when balancing on beams and supports.

In April last year, one morning I was returning home at a ridiculous early hour, I witnessed these "sagyouin" going about their trade putting together a timber framed house. I was amazed at the speed and precision they constructed the frame; in the time it took me to go to my house to get my camera, they had unloaded the jousts from the nearby truck and were assembling the frame .In the UK this task alone would have taken the best part of half a day. They achieved it in almost an hour.

I've got a real soft spot for this clothing an would love to don them myself, though I've been warned wearing such attire would be a fashion faux pas for a middle class gaijin white boy like myself...*sigh* if only I could be a New York art beatnik and have the gall to wear such gear at a gallery opening, mawing off at the mouth at how this is the "prêt Porte Japanese construction" site look....my only chance of wearing this gear would be if I ACTUALLY got a job on Japanese construction site (which at the moment sounds quite appealing !)

Thanks to Ping magazine for recently jogging my memory in a very well researched, written article.

(For the writer of this article, all painter/decorators I've met wear white - the reason why ? we may never, ever know)