![出会いは、](http://ekadoya.com/cdn/shop/articles/DSC02822.jpg?v=1673015062&width=500)
The encounter
Before I started making leather jackets at Kadoya's factory, I was quietly enjoying leather crafts by myself.
Gathering the bare minimum of tools, I tried making wallets and bags, failed, tried to make them, failed, tried to make them, then used them and improved them, had people use them and reflected on them, and even when I put them on the street, they hardly sold. There was a time like that.
The reason I started leather crafting was a trivial thing, but when did I first become interested in leather products?
My memory is vague, but it may have been the day I was sitting on the sofa reading Shonen Jump, waiting for my turn to get a haircut, at the local barber shop I went to when I was in middle school.
However, the red bean-colored sofa, which had faded in places and was worn out, was probably not made of genuine leather.
It's not like I was fascinated by the leather strips that old barbers used to swish to sharpen their razors.
I couldn't take my eyes off the shoes that the previous customer was wearing after getting a haircut.
At that time, I saw engineer boots for the first time in my life.
At that time, of course, I wasn't riding a motorcycle, nor was I into rock'n'roll.
The destructive power of engineer boots that grabbed the hearts of young people without any prior knowledge with a single blow! No, tolerance! !
From that day on, whether I slept or woke up, engineer boots still occupied my mind,
The idea that I would buy those shoes someday when I had money stuck in my heart,
The engineer boots I got a few years later are still in good condition even after more than 20 years.
Looking back further,
When I was in elementary school, I wondered why my school bag wasn't as smooth and shiny as everyone else's. I remember feeling doubtful.
The surface of the school bag I was using was a little rough, the sections with small cracks were brown, and the overall appearance was somewhat dirty.
These days, we see it being called a tea core and treated as something of value.
At the time, for some reason, it seemed old-fashioned and poor-looking, and I didn't really like it.
However, I can't imagine that the elementary school students around me got together after school and regularly soaked their school bags with mink oil and were happy about it.If that was the case, it would be quite a shocking situation, but that's probably why they didn't do it in the first place. I believe that the difference in the quality of the leather has been exposed over a long period of 6 years.
However, there was no way he could easily dislike his partner who had been with him for so many years, and after trying his best to think in the right direction, he began to think that rough leather was genuine leather and shiny leather was not, so he found another rough girl. I thought to myself, ``You're genuine leather too, right?'' It seems that he was misrepresenting his real dissatisfaction with a misplaced sense of superiority.
Even though the roughness is cowhide and the shine is horse cordovan.
However, I was a little concerned about this, so I looked into school bags and found that
Currently, most of the materials used for school bags are not leather but synthetic leather called Clarino.
Clarino, which is both light and durable, has continued to evolve since its creation and is now becoming the mainstream material for school bags.
This material was created in 1965, and it is not certain whether it has been on the market as a school bag since that year.
At least the product would have been shipped long ago in the 80's when I was an elementary school student.
All the shiny items may not have been Cordovan, so
Let's just say that the boy's eyes that saw through the genuine leather were not wrong.
My first encounter with leather products was through school bags, so
As expected, I will say that the encounter will be in engineer boots.
[Ichijima]