Kimono and yukata: how to tell which one you are looking at

A yukata is a kimono: the unlined, cotton, summer kind, worn with bare feet in wooden geta and a narrow sash. What most people picture as a kimono is the formal garment worn over a separate under-kimono, the nagajuban, with tabi socks, zori sandals and a sash about 30 cm wide. The neckline and the feet tell them apart.

Yukata meaning: a robe for the bath

Kimono (着物) literally means “thing to wear”. Yukata (浴衣) reads as bathing cloth, and the garment started out as exactly that.

Its ancestor is the yukatabira (湯帷子), a hemp robe worn in the steam baths of the Heian period. When immersion bathing replaced steam baths, the robe moved to after the bath, where its job was to soak up moisture. In the Edo period cotton took over from hemp because it absorbs water better, and that cotton robe is the yukata still sold today. Printed patterns arrived in the middle of the Edo period.

Yukata were traditionally indigo-dyed cotton. The spread of colours and prints on sale now followed a jump in popularity in the late 1990s.

The difference between kimono and yukata, in five checks

The quickest check is the neckline. Under a kimono, the nagajuban’s collar shows as a second band of fabric at the throat. A yukata is worn without one and shows a single edge. The next check is the feet: split-toe tabi socks go with zori and a kimono, bare toes with geta and a yukata.

The sash confirms it from behind. A hanhaba obi is half the width of a formal one, while a fukuro obi runs roughly 30 cm wide and 360 to 450 cm long.

What “kimono” covers

There is no single kimono. Each type sits at a fixed point between formal and everyday, and several also signal the wearer’s age or marital status.

• Furisode (振袖, “swinging sleeves”). Worn by young, typically unmarried women, and a usual choice for Coming of Age Day ceremonies.
• Kurotomesode (黒留袖). A black ground with the design only along the hem. The most formal women’s kimono.
• Irotomesode (色留袖). The same hem design on a coloured ground, one step less formal.
• Hōmongi (訪問着, “visiting wear”). Formal, with patterns that run across the seams.
• Iromuji (色無地). One colour, no decoration, worn mainly to tea ceremonies.
• Komon (小紋, “small pattern”). Informal, and the everyday women’s kimono of pre-war Japan.
• Mofuku (喪服). Mourning dress, for men and women.

Men’s sleeves carry no such message. They are sewn to the body all, or almost all, the way down and say nothing about age.

Every one of these is cut from a tanmono, a long, narrow bolt of cloth. The pieces are rectangles and the woven edges stay inside the seams instead of being trimmed off, so a kimono can be unpicked and resewn to new measurements.

How to wear a yukata: left over right

Both garments close the same way, with the left side wrapped over the right. Right over left is reserved for dressing the dead, so it is the one detail worth getting right. The rule goes back to an edict of 719 that ordered the right side closed first and the left laid on top.

The rest is simple. Women today usually tie a yukata with a hanhaba obi, or with the softer heko obi for comfort, and geta go on bare feet.

Where you will see each one

Yukata. Summer festivals, a walk to the local bathhouse, and onsen resort towns, where guests still wear them as bathrobes. Ryokan typically give guests a yukata to wear, and some lend geta for a stroll outside.

Kimono. Occasions that match the type: furisode at Coming of Age Day, held on the second Monday of January; iromuji at a tea ceremony; mofuku at a funeral.

Sumo turns the difference into rank. Wrestlers in the jonidan division may not wear an overcoat over their thin cotton yukata, even in winter, and must wear geta. From sandanme upward a wrestler may put a coat over the yukata and give up the geta.

Kimono and yukata on screen

In a Japanese period drama the clothes carry information the dialogue leaves out.

• A second collar at the throat. A nagajuban under a kimono, so a formal moment. A single cotton layer means yukata: summer, the bath, the inn.
• Long swinging sleeves on a young woman. Furisode, the unmarried woman’s kimono.
• Mofuku. The scene is about mourning.
• One plain, undecorated colour. Iromuji, the kimono of the tea ceremony.
• Right over left. Either a body or a costume error.

Questions people ask

Is a yukata a kimono? Yes. It is an unlined kimono, usually cotton, for summer and the bath. The contrast most people mean is with a lined, formal kimono, which is almost always silk.

Do men wear yukata? Yes. A man’s yukata has a shorter sleeve, about 10 cm below the armpit seam against about 20 cm on a woman’s, and it is usually tied with a kaku obi, a stiff sash about 10 cm wide.

How is a kimono different from a hanbok? A kimono is one long wrapped robe held by an obi. A Korean hanbok is two pieces, a short jacket over a separate skirt or trousers, closed with ribbon ties.