Edward VIII with his staff wearing Happi 1922

A is a traditional tube-sleeved

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

coat A coat typically is an outer garment for the upper body as worn by either gender for warmth or fashion. Coats typically have long sleeves and are open down the front and closing by means of buttons, zippers, hook-and-loop fasteners, toggles, a ...

, usually worn only during

festivals A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival co ...

. typically feature symbols and/or text on the lapels, with a larger design on the back of the coat, typically the name or the festival or the participating association; the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

for () may also be present. Originally worn to outwardly display of the , or emblem, of a family, were worn by

house servant A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...

s as a uniform.

Firefighter A firefighter is a first responder and rescuer extensively trained in firefighting, primarily to extinguish hazardous fires that threaten life, property, and the environment as well as to rescue people and in some cases or jurisdictions also ...

s also wore coats, with the crest on the back of the coat displaying the group with which they were associated;Drazen, Patrick. ''Anime explosion!: the what? why? & wow! of Japanese animation''. Stone Bridge Press, 2003.
Page 322
"In time, these groups of fire-fighters, adopting uniforms consisting of the short jackets called ''happi'' emblazoned with the ''mon'' (crest) of the particular group, so that one gang could be distinguished from another." these were distinct from the () also worn by firefighters, constructed from heavily-quilted cotton layers designed to hold a large quantity of water and thus protect the wearer. In the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, firefighters were paid not only for actual firefighting activity but also for promptness and presence at the scene of a fire. Thus, wearing conspicuous and dancing on intact roofs near fires with was essential for them. In English, the term is most often translated as "happi coat" or "happy coat". are typically blue, with designs in red, black, and white, though variations with a number of different colours are also seen in modern day Japan. Modern coats may be made of

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor perce ...

polyester Polyester is a category of polymers that contain the ester functional group in every repeat unit of their main chain. As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include natural ...

fabrics.

References

Japanese upper-body garments Japanese words and phrases {{Japan-culture-stub