Fundoshi

Fundoshi (褌^?, ふんどし) is the traditional Japanese undergarment for adult males, made from a length of cotton. Before World War II, the fundoshi was the main form of underwear for Japanese adult males. However it fell out of use quickly after the war with the introduction of new underwear to the Japanese market, such as briefs and trunks.

Nowadays, the fundoshi is mainly used not as underwear but as festival (matsuri) clothing at Hadaka Matsuri or, sometimes, as swimwear.

The fundoshi is first mentioned in the classic Japanese history text the Nihongi. They are also depicted on clay figures, haniwa. The fundoshi was the underwear of choice of every Japanese adult male, rich or poor, high or low status, until after the Second World War, when Americanization popularized elasticized underpants. There are several types of fundoshi, including rokushaku, kuroneko, mokko and etchū.

The fundoshi comes in several basic styles. The most relaxed type consists in a strip of cloth, wound around the hips, secured at the small of the back by knotting or twisting, with the excess brought forward between the legs, and tucked through the cloth belt in front to hang as an apron.

The second style, for people who are active, is formed when the cloth is wound around the hips so that there is an excess of apron, which is brought back again between the legs and twisted around the belt-cloth in back. The rokushaku fundoshi is a length of cloth, the dimensions being one shaku (34 cm / 14 inches) wide and six shaku (2.3 m / 92 to 96 inches) long; roku is Japanese for six, hence roku-shaku. The fundoshi is often twisted to create a thong effect at the back. It was also the standard male bathing suit. Male children learning to swim during the early 1960s were often told to wear this kind of fundoshi because a boy in trouble could be easily lifted out of the water by the back cloth of his fundoshi.

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Wikipedia