Traditional Japenese Footwear

Waraji Tatami sandals

This kind of footwear could be easily made using nothing more than woven and twisted reeds, the woven reeds providing a sole, the twisted reed providing the string for the hanao or to simply tie the sole onto the foot. While wafuku (traditional Japanese clothing) can be very complicated and time consuming to put on, the fastening of it is done with just simple ties, although the different and very specific knots used for each tie can be somewhat complex. This simplicity meant almost anyone could make themselves simple footwear. The traditional footwear worn with kimonos is, for women, geta or zori. The spelling of zori varies a lot, you may see it as zouri or zoori.

GETA

Plain wood geta

Lacquered wood geta

Antique geta

Ama geta, with removable toe covers, for rainwear

Men's geta

Geta are wooden soled shoes, with solid platforms or with little stilts, called teeth, on the bottom of the soles; they can be found with one, two or three teeth, the most usual being two. Paulownia wood is popular for geta. They are still worn nowadays and tend not to be too terribly high now, though, in the past their height was often much greater. The wooden bases are sometimes ornately decorated. The images below show you a very plain vintage pair, a vintage pair of lacquered wood geta, an antique pair and a pair of ama geta, with toe covers, to keep the toes dry in rain
ZORI

Brocade covered zori, with matching clutch bag

Rainwear zori

Beaded zori

Zori are thong toed, usually wedge soled, though sometimes flat shoes.Most women wear zori with kimono. The thong toe on Japanese footwear is always attached at the front centre of the sole and worn with the big toe to one side and the rest of the toes to the other. Western world flip-flops usually have the thong toe offset to one side, to allow the sole of the foot to lie centrally on the shoe sole but not so with Japanese ones. Because the thong is central, the outer side of the foot often overhangs the side of the sole a little, as can be seen in the photos with maiko okobo, above, and the pair of black zori at the top of this blog entry. The heel often overhangs the back of the sole a little too

Setta sandals

With all this footwear, one wears tabi socks, designed to be worn with thong toes. The exception is the waraji sandals, often worn without tabi, especially by workers in rural areas. The older style is non-stretch, with kohaze fasteners, the more contemporary style is stretchy without fasteners. Shoes are removed when entering a Japanese home; one walks on their scrupulously clean floors in one’s tabi socks or a pair of indoor tatami sandals. You can see tabi being worn in the photo at the top of this footwear blog post, with the black zori.

Tabi socks

Tabi toed footwear, worn as ninja boots, worn in some martial arts or just worn casually with Western world style clothing. The example below is a pair of canvas, rubber soled tabi boots, with kohaze fasteners. Nike also recently produced a range of tabi toed trainer shoes and boots, called Nike Rifts, to introduce the acupressure effects of tabi toes to the sports trainer.