ジーンズ

English jeans is the source form for Japanese ジーンズ. In English, jean first referred to a sturdy cloth associated with Genoa, whose French name is Gênes, and denim is linked with serge de Nîmes from Nîmes in France. By the nineteenth century, jeans in English meant trousers made of denim or similar cloth, especially work trousers. The Japanese borrowing belongs mainly to post-1945 fashion. American clothing circulated during the Occupation period, and denim trousers became youth and workwear items in the 1950s and 1960s. Kojima in Okayama later became a jeans center; Big John is widely cited for Japanese-made jeans in 1965. Related Japanese words include デニム and Gパン, both common in clothing shops. In present Japanese, ジーンズ is a normal singular category word even though English jeans is plural. Japanese counts it with 本 or sometimes 着, as in ジーンズを一本買った. English can say a pair of jeans, while a jean is usually fabric or an attributive form such as jean jacket. Japanese デニム can mean the fabric, the color impression, or denim clothing, but ジーンズ usually points to trousers in everyday speech.