I just think the lack of transparency with Tanuki is a very bad thing. There is nothing wrong with that! I think Burgus Plus, which is the Hinoya house brand, makes some great Jeans. I think Tanuki is basically a house brand (much like Burgus Plus) that is marketed towards western customers. How is this online retailer able to buy Tanuki jeans in Japan so they can proxy it?

People in Japan don’t know what this brand is. But as I mentioned before, Tanuki is not sold in Japan. Another interesting fact to point out is that this retailer sells it on their site….okay they “Proxy” it. The second is a recent contest winner that was flown to Japan went to see the manufacturing of Tanuki jeans. Clearly the Tanuki Instagram account is run by a fluent English speaker. The first is the Instagram accounts run by Tanuki and this company both seem to be handled by the same people. This makes since to me for a few reasons. I think it’s run by the guys who also run one of the big online retailers in Japan. I can’t think of any other Japanese brands that aren’t sold in Japan.Īt this point I came up with a theory about Tanuki denim. I even messaged Tanuki and asked where I could look at their Jeans and they said they don’t have any stock lists in Japan…. I started asking around if anyone knew anything about the brand and no one knew anything about them. With the exception of a select few, English is not spoken very well in the Japanese denim industry. This is something that you probably won’t notice unless you live in Japan. What really confused me though was the high level of English used in their social media. I was a little confused when they started out saying that they were a new “premium denim brand” that was composed of the most experienced and oldest denim makers in Okayama. One brand has recently come out that I find to be a bit strange…Tanuki. I love it and I have a huge respect for what is coming out of Japan. I spend a lot of my weekends going to all the different shops around town and occasionally traveling to Okayama. I even moved to Tokyo 4 years ago to be closer to the Japanese denim industry. I have been a fan of raw denim, specifically Japanese raw denim, for over 10 years.

Denimio oni x tanuki