Rare Items! The Keio University Square Cap and Chutobu Junior High School Salt-and-Pepper Stand-up Collar Uniform

What should be called the "variants" of Keio University uniforms are this "Square Cap" and the "Salt-and-Pepper (Shimofuri)" "Chutobu Junior High School Stand-up Collar Uniform." These two items were acquired separately through auction sites.

In the current Keio University, there are almost no opportunities to see Keio students wearing school caps; at most, one might see baseball team managers or the Keio University Cheerleading Team flag-bearers wearing them at stadiums. Furthermore, those are round caps commonly known as "Juku caps," not square caps. Stand-up collar uniforms (tsumee-eri) are seen daily as the attire of students from Keio Futsubu School, Keio Senior High School, and university students belonging to the Athletic Association. However, those are solid black, and the material known as "salt-and-pepper," made from twisted navy and white heather yarn, is not seen today. Moreover, Chutobu Junior High School does not have a stand-up collar uniform today (the current blazer is the standard attire). To give a very rough history of Keio University uniforms: around 1884, some Keio students began wearing matching Western-style clothes. In 1900, guidelines were issued for Keio Futsubu School students to wear stand-up collars and school caps (round caps), and for college students (preparatory and regular courses) to wear Western clothes. Furthermore, in 1905, it was decided that college preparatory students would also wear stand-up collars, while regular course students would wear square caps. That said, looking at photographs, this was not always the reality; at the Juku, which disliked formalism, there was no strong effort toward unification. In general Japanese student culture, the square cap was an object of admiration, rooted in the awareness that only those at the highest educational institutions—universities (regular courses)—could wear the square cap as a symbol of academic authority. However, this is Keio University. Keio students looked down on the ostentatious square caps, preferring to wear fedoras or similar hats with the prescribed The Pen Mark attached. As discipline became stricter throughout Japan during the Showa era, the round caps of the lowerclassmen began to be worn even in the university's regular courses. The Juku authorities formally recognized this in writing as the official uniform in 1940. In other words, the square cap that appeared this time is a relic from the late Meiji or early Taisho periods, which Keio students ignored and thus never took root. As for the stand-up collars, while they are solid black today, they were not unified in the past either; it seems that students of Keio Futsubu School and the School of Commerce and Industry, in particular, wore salt-and-pepper versions as summer uniforms. The salt-and-pepper stand-up collar that appeared this time teaches us that it was worn even at Chutobu Junior High School after the war, and The Pen Mark with the character for "Middle" (中) on the button is also a fresh discovery. Even with a single uniform, Keio University is never simple. (Scheduled for display at the Keio History Museum's "New Acquisitions Exhibition 2026" from January 10 to February 7, 2026.)

(Takeyuki Tokura, Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies / Shunsuke Sakai, Researcher, same center)