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The long reign of the tie as an indispensable feature of Japanese business uniform will officially unravel next month, when government statisticians update the country’s consumer goods basket for more liberal, open-necked times.
For the first time since 1948, the tie will no longer appear on the list of 589 goods used to calculate Japan’s consumer price index, a gauge of public spending behaviour that is updated every five years to reflect underlying shifts of modern life.
The tie is not alone in its historic banishment. Tights and stockings — once almost universal for women in the Japanese office — will also be scratched from the government’s list of everyday goods, victims to the march of progressively more casual office wear as trousers, socks and trainers colonise white-collar workplaces.
In their place, the Statistics Bureau will elevate goods such as pet insurance and pineapples, reflecting the shifting spending habits of younger Japanese. Bicycle helmets have also been added, following new regulations to improve road safety.
Another prominent addition to the CPI basket is protein powder, the supplement favoured by a generation more focused than their forebears on building muscle mass.
Protein powder, bars and drinks sales are estimated to rise by about a third since 2021 to a ¥211.5bn ($1.3bn) market, according to Fuji Keizai, a research house.
Pan Pacific International Holdings, the owner of Don Quijote, one of Japan’s biggest retailers, told the FT that sales of protein powder had at least doubled over the past decade, as demand expanded from bodybuilders to ordinary consumers incorporating protein as “part of their regular health and wellness routines”.
It added that it planned to expand its offerings of “protein bars and jelly products”, as well as push into a wider variety of protein types such as whey, soy and casein.
The shake-up of the CPI basket is the first since the Covid-19 pandemic, which ushered in drastic changes to Japanese business as companies adapted to remote working, Zoom meetings and other workplace innovations.
Japan’s consumer prices have risen steadily in recent years as the country has made a defining transition from deflation to inflation — a period that has also prompted the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates to 1 per cent for the first time in 31 years.
In many ways, pandemic-era changes have proved more lasting than expected. A widely predicted snapback to rigid dress codes and a culture of presenteeism has not materialised, and the postwar salaryman uniform has traded ties for T-shirts and chinos.
Necktie production and imports are languishing at a third of 2009 levels, crashing to 11mn units, according to data from the Necktie Cooperated Association of Tokyo.
One 60-year veteran of Japan’s tie manufacturing industry dated the beginning of its disappearance to 2005 and the introduction of “Cool Biz” policy measures, a summer office dress code of short-sleeved shirts without ties or jackets.
“It created an image of going without a tie . . . it became almost a situation where you were not supposed to wear one,” he said, pointing to an almost 90 per cent drop in his factory’s volumes.
Japan’s annual supply of stockings and tights, meanwhile, has fallen by more than half since 2016 to 125mn pairs, according to the Japan Sock Association. Sales peaked at more than 1bn pairs in the late 1980s.
The fading grip of ties and tights over corporate Japan has coincided with the meteoric rise of casualwear brand Uniqlo over the past 30 years, which now accounts for 12.5 per cent of domestic clothes sales.
The tie industry veteran, however, maintained hopes for the role of the accessory, indicating more formal dress conventions on television.
“Times have changed. Ties are less of a fashion statement and they’re now more associated with the image of straightening your collar and behaving properly,” he said.
