FOR MOST OF the week Ichiro Tonogi is a typical salaryman, squeezed anonymously and uncomfortably like millions of Japanese office workers into a plain off-the-rack suit that has the shirt sticking to his back by eight in the morning.
But by the weekend he's transformed into Kimono-man when he dons Japan's traditional costume and strolls around his suburban neighbourhood looking more like a feudal lord than a wage slave. 'It looks and feels a lot better than a suit,' he says, fingering the collar. 'I feel free in this.'
Fellow kimono fan Kyoko Ishihara agrees. 'Men and women look strong and sexy in traditional Japanese clothes,' she says. 'They should wear them more often.'
Few do, however. Already a fading tradition before the second world war, silk kimonos were swept aside by the cultural transformation that accompanied urbanisation in the 1950s and 60s. Expensive, unwieldy and increasingly viewed as an anachronism in a country aping all things western, they are one of the many victims - along with tea shops, decent parks and clean politics - of Japan's modern lifestyle.
For years, kimono wearers were like exotic plumed birds stranded in Japan's urban landscape. Recently, however, they've been making something of a comeback.
Although sales of new kimonos have been plummeting for years, falling prices, cheaper materials and a recent recycling boom is rekindling interest, particularly among the fussy twenty and thirtysomethings that help prop up Japan's huge consumer market. More than two million second-hand kimonos have been sold since 2001, while the market for used and replica kimonos has swelled from six billion yen ($434 million) in 1999 to an estimated 50 billion yen this year, according to industry watcher Yano Intelligence.