The “Cosplay” Version of a Recruitment Suit (Norinao Tanaka)

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When one hears the term "recruitment suit," many might envision students participating in group company presentations as shown on television. Nowadays, there are numerous companies that allow "free dress code" during company briefings, but upon closer inspection, everyone seems to be wearing matching recruitment suit.

By the way, have you ever wondered, "Why must I wear a recruitment suit?" For Japanese people, who unconsciously associate "job hunting = recruitment suit," what exactly is the significance of the recruitment suit?

In this piece, I interviewed Associate Professor Norinao Tanaka of Bunkyo Gakuin University, who conducts research such as in "The Social History of the Recruitment Suit," to explore the history of recruitment suit and its acceptance in contemporary society.

PROFILE

Norinao Tanaka

Associate Professor of Fashion Studies at Bunkyo Gakuin University. After completing a Master's program at Waseda University in the Graduate School of Literature, she worked as an editor for Shufunotomo-sha, and earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Civilization at the Graduate School of Literature at Rikkyo University. Her co-authored works include "ファッションで社会学する" (Yuhikaku Publishing, 2017) edited by Yuiko Fujita et. al., and "現代文化への社会学" (Hokuju Shuppan, 2018) edited by Kohei Takano, Yutaka Iida, and Takashi Kashima.

Can you tell us about your journey into fashion research?

Originally, because of my love for literature and novels, I decided during my student days to study "women's magazines" as an interdisciplinary field between literature and history. Since I was in a women’s history seminar, I became interested in the pre-war women's magazine "Shufu no Tomo" and began exploring what the most interesting article genres were, which led me to fashion articles.

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