“Daughter’s style attending school [sic]”, Girls’ school uniform (andon bakama), c. 1920.

See also:
Changing fashion (Western dress), c. 1910.

“Towards the end of Meiji era and the beginning of Taisho era, due to the influences from foreign countries, the mixture of Japanese culture and western culture was formed.

“The uniform school boys wore was called gakuran. It has a hat, a black top with a stand-up collar, usually has five golden color buttons and a black bottom, but with geta on their feet.

“For school girls, they wore andon bakama [lit. ‘lantern hakama’, named for its similarity in appearance to a Japanese paper lantern]. Different from men’s wear, it was specially designed by Utako Shimoda (a teacher and principal at the Girls’ Peer School) between 1920 and 1930 for schoolgirls to wear, with leather boots and bow tied on their hair.

“This style of school uniform became popular among school girls [of the] Taisho era. Personally I think it was the most lovely combination among all the different school uniforms in the history of the development of Japanese uniforms.”

– “Development and Evolution of Japanese School Uniform”, Lijie Jiang, Medium, 2017