Gyoda Tabi Today | Artisan Craft and a New Knit Tabi

Gyoda, a city in northern Saitama, is known as a home of tabi. Storehouses called tabi-gura still stand scattered through the town, and the history of tabi-making is written into the streetscape itself. At its peak, Gyoda is said to have produced the majority of Japan's tabi, and in 2017 this tabi-making culture was recognised as Japan Heritage. Here, ISAMI (Isami Corporation), a maker rooted in Gyoda's tabi trade, talks about where Gyoda tabi stands today — and about the new kind of tabi that has come out of it.

Gyoda and tabi — an industry that made a town

Tabi are sewn goods: the fabric is cut, then the instep, sole and other parts are stitched together. A single pair passes through many stages, and in Gyoda each of those stages had its own skilled hands, so that the whole town functioned rather like one large workshop. ISAMI is one of the makers rooted in this production region, and a member of the Gyoda tabi trade association.

A changing kimono culture, and the tabi makers of today

Fewer and fewer people wear kimono day to day, and demand for tabi has shrunk along with the wider kimono trade. In Gyoda too, one company after another has stopped making tabi. The skill is still there; it is the market the skill was aimed at that keeps getting smaller — a problem familiar to many traditional craft regions. But we treat these as two separate questions: demand for tabi has fallen, and that is a different matter from whether the craft of tabi-making has become outdated. Cutting flat cloth, sewing it into three dimensions, shaping it to the foot — that skill was never for kimono alone.

"Isami Tabi Honpo", founded in 1907

Our parent company, Isami Corporation, was founded in Meiji 40 (1907) as Isami Tabi Honpo. Ever since, working from Mukaicho in Gyoda City, we have made tabi and school uniforms. Over more than a century the products have changed with the times, but the core of the work — making things to be worn, by cutting and sewing — has not.

The pine at the main gate, and our logo

Our brand logo takes a pine tree as its motif. A pine over 120 years old stands by the main gate, where it has been since the company's founding, and it has watched over the business all that time. Not chasing trends, but staying rooted in one place and carrying on: nothing embodies our approach to making things more plainly than that tree.

The new ISAMI brand, and The Knit Tabi

In November 2025 we launched a new brand, ISAMI. Its flagship product is The Knit Tabi, which went on sale on 26 June 2026. It takes the techniques of tabi-making out of the world of kimono and redesigns them as everyday footwear to go with sneakers and sandals. An ordinary sock is a shaped piece, knitted into a tube on a circular knitting machine; The Knit Tabi is made from a dedicated knit fabric that is cut and then sewn, pair by pair, using tabi construction. It looks like a sock; it is built like a tabi. Not knitted, but tailored — a product that only Gyoda's sewing skills make possible.

The fabric comes from Mitsuke, Niigata — two regions meeting

The other lead player is the fabric. The knit is "Amossa", a dedicated jacquard fabric co-developed with Mitsumoto Textile in Mitsuke, Niigata, a city known for its knitwear. Rather than borrowing an off-the-shelf sock fabric, we designed the material and the knit structure from scratch, so that it would stand up to being cut and sewn while still having the hand a tabi deserves. Mitsuke for knit, Gyoda for tabi: two production regions, their skills combined into a way of making tabi that has not existed before.

In closing: a new kind of tabi, from Gyoda

As tabi-making for kimono contracts, we wanted to give Gyoda's skills somewhere new to go. That is why we made The Knit Tabi. A split-toe shape suits thonged footwear, of course, and it also lets you move your toes individually, for something close to the feeling of being barefoot (experiences vary from person to person). Tabi-making in Gyoda continues, changing shape as it goes. There is more on the background to the brand on our About page, the products themselves are in the online store, and you will find how they are worn on our styling page.