“Ski”-brand Woolen Yarn advertising postcard, c. 1930.

“Ski”-brand Woolen Yarn advertising postcard, c. 1930, published by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. The red tag attached to the left yarn bundle reads “Easy to knit. Does not fray.”

Knitwear first appeared in Japan with the advent of trade with Portugual and Spain in the 16th century. The Japanese word for “knit”, meriyasu, derives from the Portuguese meias or Spanish medias (“sock”).

Wool was not native to Japan. Sheep were first imported only after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 when the new government promoted domestic sheep breeding to produce wool for military uniforms and other Western-style dress in order to reduce Japan’s dependence on imports.

In 1870, Japan’s first domestic machine-made knitwear was manufactured in Tokyo; by 1888 Japan was exporting machine-knit socks to Qing China. Meriyasu became the umbrella term for all machine-knit fabrics by this time.

Knitting entered the Japanese school curricula initially through missionary girls’ schools in the early 1870s. But, by the end of the decade, the Ministry of Education had formally introduced knitting nationwide into public school curricula, publishing two of the first school knitting manuals, Dojosen, between 1877 and 1879.

In 1907, the Fujii Hikoshiro Shoten was founded by a pioneering Japanese businessman who had become known for his earlier contributions to the synthetic textile industry, spurring the development of synthetic silk (rayon) in Japan in the late 19th century.

When the quality proved unsatisfactory compared to natural silk, Fujii shifted his company’s focus to woolen yarn, becoming one of the earliest textile companies in Japan to commercialize hand-knitting yarn on a large scale.

Fujii introduced “Ski”-brand wool yarn in 1926. Originally, “Ski” wool yarn was made from imported wool, primarily from Australia and New Zealand. (There were fewer than 5000 sheep in Japan at the time.) Later, as Japan’s textile industry modernized, Fujii pursued the development of other material blends and the “Ski” brand would expand into textile blends (wool/nylon), eventually manufacturing pure synthetic yarns as well.